Records of the past : being English translations of the ancient monuments of Egypt and western Asia

RECORDS OF THE PAST

R3 V I 8

RECORDS OF THE PAST

OF THE

ANCIENT MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND
WESTERN ASIA

NEW SERIES

EDITED BY A. H. SAYCE
VOL. I

Multse terricolis linguae, coelestibus una

LONDON

SAMUEL BAGSTER AND SONS, LIMITED
15 PATERNOSTER ROW

PREFACE

THE favourable reception accorded to the first series
of Records of the Past, and the hope more than once
expressed since its discontinuance that a similar
series would be again started, have led to this second
attempt to lay before the public some of the most
important documents left us by the civilised nations
of the ancient Oriental world. During the ten years
that have elapsed since the first series was concluded,
Assyrian research may be said to have entered upon
a new phase. Expeditions have returned from
Babylonia, bringing with them the spoils of ancient
libraries, the clay tablets preserved in the British
Museum and elsewhere have been copied and
examined with increased industry and exactness,
and students have been flocking to the new study in
Germany and America. The decipherment of the
cuneiform inscriptions of Van has opened up a fresh
world of language and history, and the geography of
Western Asia in the Assyrian epoch has been
mapped out in almost all its essential details.

The increase of materials, and more especially of

vi PREFACE

labourers in the field of research, has made our know-
ledge of the Assyrian lexicon at once wider and
more accurate. Inscriptions- which were still obscure
ten years ago can now be read with a fair approach
to exactness, while many of the translations proposed
in the former series of the Records can be amended
in many respects. Indeed there are certain cases in
which the progress of knowledge has shown the
tentative renderings of a few years ago to be so
faulty, if not misleading, that it has been determined
to replace them by revised translations in the series
which is now being issued.

The new series will, it is hoped, be found to be
an improvement upon its predecessor in certain
points. The translations will be provided with fuller
introductions and notes, bearing more particularly
upon the history, geography, and theology of the
texts, and drawing attention to the illustrations they
afford of the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The
historical inscriptions, moreover, will be published, so
far as is possible, in chronological order.

In one point, however, a difference will be noticed
between the plan of this second series of Records and
that of the first. The value of a translation from a
language known only to a few scholars depends in
large measure upon the confidence with which its
precise wording can be accepted. The writer who
wishes to make use of a translation from an Egyp-
tian or Assyrian text for historical or controversial
purposes ought to know where it is certain, and

PREFACE vn

where it is only possible, or at most probable. He
ought to receive warning of passages or words or
readings of doubtful character, and the translator
ought to provide proofs of any new renderings he
may give. In the present series of volumes, accord-
ingly, doubtful words and expressions will be
followed by a note of interrogation, the preceding
word being put into italics where necessary : other-
wise italics will be used only for the transliteration
of proper names or words which cannot at present
be translated. The notes will contain a justification
of new translations, whether of words hitherto unde-
ciphered or of words to which a different signification
has hitherto been attached. The names of indi-
viduals will be distinguished from those of deities or
localities by being printed in Roman type, whereas
the names of deities and localities will be in capitals.
Though exploration and discovery have been
carried on actively in Egypt during the last decade,
thanks mainly to the Egypt Exploration Fund and
the enterprise of Professor Maspero, the results have
not been so startling or numerous as those which
have attended the progress of the younger study of
Assyriology. There is not the same reason for
amending the translations, previously published, of
Egyptian documents, nor has any large number of
historical texts been brought to light. Instead, there-
fore, of publishing alternately translations from the
Assyrian and Egyptian monuments, Assyrian and
Egyptian texts will appear in the same volume,

vin PREFA CE

though it will doubtless happen that the Assyrian
element will preponderate in some volumes, the
Egyptian element in others. Egyptian and Assyrian,
of course, will not be exclusively represented ; Phoe-
nicians and Proto-Armenians have left us written
monuments, comparatively few though they may be,
and the Records of the Past would be incomplete
without such important inscriptions as that of the
Moabite king Mesha or of the Hebrew Pool of
Siloam.

In commending the first volume of this new series
of Records to the approval of the public, the Editor
must not forget to say that the enterprise is inter-
national, eminent scholars belonging to all national-
ities having consented to take part in it, and that if
his name appears somewhat too frequently in the
present volume, it is a fault which shall not occur
again.

A. H. SAYCE.

QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD,
y August 1888.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE DYNASTIC TABLETS AND CHRONICLES

OF THE BABYLONIANS. By the EDITOR . i

II. THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH. By M.

ARTHUR AMIAUD ..... 42

III. SIN-GASHID'S ENDOWMENT OF THE TEMPLE

&-ANA. By Mr. THEO. G. PINCHES,
Assistant-Curator in the British Museum . 78

IV. AN ERECHITE'S LAMENT. By Mr. THEO.

G. PINCHES ...... 84

V. INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I, KING

OF ASSYRIA. By the EDITOR . . . 86

VI. THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION.

By the EDITOR . . . . .122

VII. THE BABYLONIAN STORY OF THE CREATION

ACCORDING TO THE TRADITION OF CUTHA.

By the EDITOR. ..... 147

CONTENTS

PAGE

VIII. BABYLONIAN LAWSUITS AND JUDGMENTS.
By Professor J. OPPERT, Member of the
Institute . . . . . .154

IX. INSCRIPTION OF MENUAS, KING OF ARARAT,
IN THE VANNIC LANGUAGE. By the
EDITOR . . . . . .163

X. THE ANCIENT HEBREW INSCRIPTION OF

SILOAM. By the EDITOR . . .168

EQUIVALENTS OF THE HEBREW LETTERS IN THE TRANS-
LITERATION OF ASSYRIAN NAMES MENTIONED IN
THESE VOLUMES.

N a, ' ? /

2 b 13 m

a g !:

1 d D 'j, s

\\ h ye

* I z

T 3 P /J

n /'/; p ^

D rfA "1 r

^ it y W s, sh

T k n /

A 7 ".^. Those Assyriologists who transcribe W by j/j use j for D.
The Assyrian e represents a diphthong as well as y.

In the Introductions and Notes W. A. I. denotes The
Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, in five volumes,
published by the Trustees of the British Museum.

THE ASSYRIAN CALENDAR

1. Ni'sannu (Nisan)

2. Aaru (lyyar)

3. 'Sivanu (Sivan) .

4. Duzu (Tammuz) .

5. Abu (Ab) ....

6. Ululu (Elul)

7. Tasritu (Tisri) .

8. Arakh - savna (Marchesvan)

" the 8th month " .

9. Ki'silivu (Chisleu)
i o. Dhabitu (Tebet) .

1 1. Sabadhu (Sebat)

12. Addaru (Adar) .

13. Arakh-makhrti (Ve-Adar), the

CORRESPONDING MONTHS

March April.
April May.
May June.
June July.
July August.
August September.
September October.

October November.
November December.
December January.
January February.
February March,
intercalary month.

THE DYNASTIC TABLETS AND
CHRONICLES OF THE BABYLONIANS

BY THE EDITOR

CHRONOLOGY is the skeleton of history, and until
we can find the correct chronological place for a his-
torical monument it loses a large part of its value.
Thanks to the lists of the so-called eponyms, by
means of whom the Assyrians dated their years, the
chronology of the Assyrian kings has long since been
placed upon a satisfactory footing as far back as the
tenth century before our era. The dates, moreover,
assigned by Sennacherib to Tiglath-Pileser I. (B.C.
1 1 06), and Tukulti-Uras, the son of Shalmaneser I.
(B.C. 1290), as well as the lengthy genealogies with
which these kings are connected, enable us to extend
Assyrian chronology back for another five hundred
years, though, of course, with only approximate
accuracy.

While our knowledge of Assyrian chronology,

however, has thus been tolerably fixed for a long

time past, we have had to depend upon the vague

and contradictory statements of Greek writers for

VOL. I B

RECORDS OF THE PAST

our knowledge of the chronology of the older king-
dom of Babylonia. Apart from the invaluable table
of kings known as Ptolemy's Canon, which belongs
to the later period of Babylonian history, and the
unsatisfactory list of dynasties excerpted from an
epitomist of Berossos, our only monumental authori-
ties for Babylonian chronology were the Assyrian
inscriptions themselves, together with a few fragments
of a dynastic tablet brought to light by Mr.
George Smith and the so-called Synchronous History
of Assyria and Babylonia, of which I published a
translation in the former series of Records of the
Past (vol. iii.) This " Synchronous History " was
composed by an Assyrian scribe, and consists of
brief notices of the occasions on which the kings of
the two countries had entered into relation, hostile or
otherwise, with one another. Since my translation
was published in 1874, another large fragment of
the tablet has been discovered, and accordingly I
purpose giving a new translation of the whole docu-
ment in a future volume of the present series. The
"Synchronous History" gives no dates, and conse-
quently its chronological value depends upon our
knowledge of the respective dates to which the
Assyrian monarchs mentioned in it belong.

Within the last few years a number of discoveries
due to Mr. Pinches has entirely changed our position
in regard to the chronology of the Babylonian kings.
As I have already stated, Mr. Smith found among
the tablets brought from the royal library of Nineveh

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 3

a small fragment which, as he perceived, contained
the names and regnal years of the kings of Baby-
lonia, arranged in dynasties. The work to which it
belonged must accordingly have been similar to that
from which Berossos derived his dynastic list of
Chaldean monarchs. Mr. Smith published the frag-
ment, with a translation and commentary, in the
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Arc/oology y
iii. 2 (1874). It is written on both sides, and the
tablet once consisted of six columns, each containing
about seventy lines. I will call it the " Third
Dynastic Tablet."

The next discovery was made by Mr. Pinches six
years later among the inscriptions brought from the
site of Babylon by the overseer of Mr. Hormuzd
Rassam. He found among them a small tablet of
unbaked clay, quite complete and inscribed on both
sides. It contains the names of the kings belonging
to two early dynasties, the number of years reigned
by each king being added to the names in the case
of the first dynasty. The tablet seems to be a sort
of schoolboy's exercise, having been copied from
some larger work in order to be committed to
memory. The Reverse has been published by Mr.
Pinches in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Archeology, 7th December 1880, and I will call it
the " First Dynastic Tablet."

Another and more important document the
" Second Dynastic Tablet " was published by Mr.
Pinches, with a translation and explanation, in the

RECORDS OF THE PAST

Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, 6th
May 1884. This is also a tablet of unbaked clay
from Babylonia, and it contains a list of the Baby-
lonian sovereigns, arranged in dynasties, from the first
dynasty which made the city of Babylon the capital
down to the period of the Persian conquest. The
number of regnal years is added to the name of
each king and the length of time each dynasty lasted
is duly recorded. The names of some of the kings
are written in an abbreviated form : this is especially
the case with those belonging to the second dynasty.

The list, it will be observed, is confined to the
dynasties which reigned in Babylon itself. No
notice is taken of the kings and dynasties who ruled
in " Accad and Sumer " before Babylon became the
capital of the empire. The lost columns of the
" Third Dynastic Tablet " show how numerous they
were, and the fact is borne out by the bricks and
other monuments of early Chaldean monarchs
whose names do not occur among the successors of
'Sumu-abi. Most of the kings, indeed, whose names
are known to us in connection with the temples they
built or restored belonged to older dynasties than
those which had their seat in the city of Babylon.

A considerable number of their names is to be
found in another tablet brought by Mr. Rassam from
Assyria, and published by Mr. Pinches in the Pro-
ceedings of the Society of Biblical A rc/iczology, 1 1 th
January 1881. A small portion of it had already
been published in W. A. I., ii. 65, and had given rise

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 5

to a good many false conclusions. The object of
this tablet was philological and not chronological ; in
fact the writer expressly states that the names of the
kings were " not written according to their chrono-
logical order." He merely wished to furnish the
Semitic or Assyro-Babylonian translations of the
Accado-Sumerian and Kassite names borne by so
many of the early princes, and in some cases of the
mode in which the names of Semitic kings were pro-
nounced or written by their Accadian subjects.

Among the latter is the name of Sargon of Accad,
the ancient hero of the Semitic population of Chaldaea,
who founded the first Semitic empire in the country
and established a great library in his capital city of
Agade or Accad near Sippara. The seal of his
librarian, Ibni-sarru, of very beautiful workmanship,
is now in Paris, and has been published by M. de
Clercq (Collection de Clcrcq, pi. 5, No. 46), while a
copy of his annals, together with those of his son
Naram-Sin, is to be found in W. A. I., iv. 34. His
date has been fixed by a passage in a cylinder of
Nabonidos discovered in the ruins of the temple of
the Sun-god at Sippara, and published in W. A. I.,
v. 64. The antiquarian zeal of Nabonidos led him to
excavate among the foundations of the temple in the
hope of finding the cylinder of Naram-Sin, who was
known to have been the founder of it, and he tells
us (col. ii. 5 6 seg.) :

" I sought for its old foundation-stone, and eighteen cubits
deep

RECORDS OF THE PAST

I dug into the ground, and the foundation-stone of

Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon,
which for 3200 years no king who had gone before me

had seen,
the Sun-god, the great lord of E-Babara, the temple of the

seat of the goodness of his heart,
let me see, even me."

In the opinion, therefore, of Nabonidos, a king
who had a passion for investigating the past records
of his country, Naram-Sin reigned 3200 years before
his own time, that is to say, about B.C. 3700.

Before the rise of the Semitic kingdom of Sargon
of Accad, lies that earlier Accado-Sumerian period
when Babylonia was still in the hands of a people
who spoke an agglutinative language, such as those
of the modern Turks or Finns, and had originated
the cuneiform system of writing and the primitive
civilisation of the Chaldean cities. Relics of this
ancient period have been discovered by M. de
Sarzec in the mounds of Tel-loh, and the Sumerian
inscriptions which they bear are now being de-
ciphered by French scholars, more especially by
M. Amiaud. M. Amiaud has been good enough
to introduce the historical documents of Babylonia
and Assyria to the readers of the present series
of Records of the Past, by his translations of these
oldest memorials of human life and thought in the
valley of the Euphrates. If Sargon of Accad lived
about B.C. 3800, the kings of Telloh must have
flourished as far back as the fourth millennium before
our era.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 7

The last chronological document brought to light
during the last few years is in many respects the
most important of all. This is what has been
termed "The Babylonian Chronicle" by its dis-
coverer, Mr. Pinches, who gave an abstract of it in
the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical A rchceology,
6th May 1884. Since then, the text has been
published with a translation and commentary by
Dr. Winckler in the Zeitschrift filr Assyriologic>
ii. 2, 3 (1887); it has also been translated by
Dr. Oppert The tablet (which is marked 84.
2- 1 1, 356) was brought from Babylonia and is
inscribed on both sides with four columns of text.
It was a copy or compilation made by a Babylonian
in the reign of Darius from older records, and must
have been similar to the document from which
Ptolemy's Canon of Babylonian kings was extracted.
Like the latter it starts from the era of Nabonassar,
B.C. 747.

The chronicle is written from a Babylonian point
of view, and must therefore be checked by contem-
poraneous Assyrian inscriptions. What they de-
scribe as Assyrian successes are sometimes passed
over altogether or represented as Babylonian vic-
tories. The Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser III and
Shalmaneser IV are not acknowledged under the
names they had adopted from two of the most
illustrious monarchs of the first Assyrian empire,
but under their original names of Pul and Ulula ;
Sargon, on the other hand, whose name was that of

RECORDS OF THE PAST

the favourite hero of Babylonian legend, is known
by the same name in the Chronicle as he is on the
monuments of Assyria. At the same time the
Chronicle helps us in correcting the inaccuracies of
the Assyrian accounts, where, for example, Suzub
represents both Nergal-yusezib and Musezib-Mero-
dach. In fact, it confirms the judgment, already
expressed by Assyriologists, that Sennacherib is the
least trustworthy of the royal historians of Assyria.

We are at present ignorant of the precise way in
which the Babylonians reckoned their chronology.
In Assyria the years were named after certain officers,
ordinarily known as eponyms, who were changed
each year, and as most of the institutions of Assyria
were derived from Babylonia it is very probable that
the system of counting time by the names of the
eponyms was also of Babylonian invention. How far
we can trust the dates assigned to the kings of the
earlier dynasties is open to question. The length of
reign assigned to the kings of the dynasties of the
sea and of Bit-Bazi in the Second and Third Dynastic
Tablets do not agree, while the number of regnal years
given to the several kings of the first dynasty of Babylon
not only plays on the same ciphers but is suspiciously
long. On the other hand, the contract -tablets be-
longing to the time of Khammuragas imply that his
reign was not a short one.

There is evidence in a later part of the dynastic
lists that at least one name has been omitted. Dr.
Winckler has published (in the Zeitschrift fur As-

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS g

syriologie, ii. 3) the commencement of an inscription
from Babylonia (marked 83.1-18) belonging to a
certain king of Babylon, who calls himself Kuri-galzu
the son of Kara-Urus. Dr. Winckler shows that this
must be Kuri-galzu II, and that his name ought to
occur in the list between those of Kara-Urus and
Rimmon-nadin-suma. It is quite possible that other
reigns have fallen out in other parts of the lists.

The lacuna in the Second Dynastic Tablet be-
tween the beginning of the eighth dynasty and the
commencement of the reign of Nabonassar unfor-
tunately prevents us from determining with certainty
the date assigned by the compiler of it to 'Sumu-abi.
But there are two synchronisms between Babylonian
and Assyrian history which may serve to remedy the
defect. According to Sennacherib, Merodach-nadin-
akhe defeated Tiglath-Pileser I, 418 years before his
own conquest of Babylon, that is to say, in B.C. 1106,
while the " Synchronous History " makes Assur-bil-
kala, the son of Tiglath-Pileser I, the contem-
porary of Merodach-sa.pik-kullat, and Assur-dan the
great-grandfather of Tiglath-Pileser I, the contem-
porary of Zamama-nadin-suma, the father of Assur-
dan being contemporaneous with Rimmon-[suma-
natsir ?]. If Merodach-nadin-akhe is the ninth king
of the dynasty of Isin, the date of Zamama-nadin-
suma will be B.C. 1160, agreeing very well with the
period to which the end of the reign of Assur-dan
should be assigned. In this case Sagasalti-buryas,
who flourished 800 years before Nabonidos, will not

io RECORDS OF THE PAST

be identical with the Saga-sal [tiyas] of the dynastic
list. The reign of Khammuragas will have com-
menced B.C. 2282, the first dynasty of Babylon
establishing its power there in B.C. 2394.

We learn from the inscriptions of Khammuragas
that he was the first of his dynasty to rule over the
whole of Babylonia. A rival dynasty had previously
reigned at Karrak in the south, while the Elamites
had invaded portions of the country and probably
held them in subjection. Assur-bani-pal states that
the Elamite king Kudur- Nankhundi had carried
away the image of the goddess Nana from Babylonia
1635 years before his own time, or about B.C. 2285,
and contract -tablets refer to the conquest of "the
lord of Elam and King Rim-Agu" of Karrak by
Khammuragas. A large number of contract-tablets,
indeed, belong not only to the reigns of Khammu-
ragas and his son Samsu-iluna, but also to the reign
of Rim-Agu, who seems to have been master of the
greater part of Chaldaea before his overthrow by the
king of Babylon. George Smith was probably right
in identifying him with the son of the Elamite prince
Kudur- Mabug, who ruled at Larsa and claimed the
imperial title of " king of Sumer and Accad."

The rise of the empire of Khammuragas brought
with it a revival of learning and literature such as
had marked the rise of the empire of Sargon. The
calendar appears to have been reformed at this
period, and the great native work on astronomy and
astrology put into the shape in which it has come

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 11

down to us. The reign thus formed an era some-
what similar to that of Nabonassar, and it is therefore
curious to see how closely the date I have assigned
to it corresponds with that arrived at by von Gut-
schmidt from classical sources for the beginning of
the Babylonian epoch. If the Latin translation can
be trusted (Simplicius ad Arist. de Coelo, 503 A), the
astronomical observations sent by Kallisthenes from
Babylon to Aristotle in B.C. 331 reached back for
1903 years (i.e. to B.C. 2234). Berossos the Chaldean
historian, according to Pliny (N.H. vii. 57), stated
that these observations commenced at Babylon 490
years before the Greek era of Phoroneus, and conse-
quently in B.C. 2243. According to Stephanos of
Byzantium, Babylon was built 100:2 years before the
date (given by Hellanikos) for the siege of Troy
(B.C. 1229), which would bring us to B.C. 2231, while
Ktesias, according to George Syncellus, made the
reign of Belos or Bel-Merodach last for fifty-five years
from B.C. 2286 to 2231. The fifty-five years of Belos
agree with the fifty-five of Khammuragas.

I add here the Canon of Babylonian kings given
by Ptolemy in the Almagest.

B.C.

1. Nabonassar (Nabu-natsir), 14 years . . 747

2. Nadios (Nadinu), 2 years . . . . 733

3. Khinziros and Poros (Yukin-zira and Pul), 5

years . . . . . . .731

4. Iloulaios or Yougaios 1 (Ulula), 5 years . . 726

1 Yougaios, if it is not due to a corruption of the text, may represent
the name of Vagina, the father of Merodach-baladan.

12 RECORDS OF THE PAST

B.C.

5. Mardokempados (Merodach-baladan), 12 years 721

6. Arkeanos (Sargon), 5 years . . . . 709

7. Interregnum for 2 years 1 . . . .704

8. Belibos (Bel-ebus), 2 3 years . . . . 702

9. Aparanadios 3 (Assur-nadin-suma), 6 years . 700

10. Regebelos (Nergal-yusezib), i year. . . 694

11. Mesesimordakos (Musezib-Merodach), 4 years . 693

12. Interregnum for 8 years .... 689

13. Asaridinos (Esar-haddon), 13 years . . 68 1

14. Saosdoukhinos (Saul-suma-yukin), 20 years . 668

15. Kineladanos (Kandalanu), 22 years . . 648

1 6. Nabopolassaros (Nabu-pal-utsur), 21 years . 626

17. Nabokolassaros (Nebuchadnezzar), 43' years . 605

1 8. Ilauaroudamos (Avil-Merodach), 2 years. . 562

19. Nerigasolasaros (Nergal-sarra-utsur), 4 years . 560*

20. Nabonadios (Nabu-nahid), 17 years . . 556

1 Filled up according to Alexander Polyhistor by the brother of Senna-
cherib, by Hagisa or Akises for thirty days, and by Merodach-baladan for
six months.

2 Called Elibos by Alexander Polyhistor.

3 Assordanios according to Alexander Polyhistor.

4 Josephus (from Berossos) here inserts Laborosoarkhodos, the infant
son of Neriglissor, for three months.

No. i. TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST DYNASTIC
TABLET FROM BABYLON

OBVERSE

1. 'Sumu-abi, the king: 15 years.

2. 'Sumu-la-ilu, the son of the same : 35 years.

3. Zabu, the son of the same : 14 years.

4. Abil-Sin, the son of the same : 1 8 years.

5. Sin-muballidh, the son of the same : 30 years.

6. Khammu-ragas, 1 the son of the same : 55 years.

7. 'Sam'su-iluna, 2 the son of the same : 35 years.

8. Ebisum, 3 the son of the same : 25 years.

9. Ammi-satana, the son of the same : 2 5 years.

i o. Ammi-sadugga, 4 the son of the same : 2 1 years.

11. 'Sam'su-satana (?), the son of the same : 31 years.

12. ii kings .of the dynasty of BABYLON.

REVERSE

1. (The dynasty of) URU-AZAGGA. S Anman the king.

2. KI-[AN] Nigas. 6

3. Damki-ili-su. 7

1 The first five names of the dynasty are Semitic. Khammuragas is
Kassite or Kossaean, and is interpreted " of a large family." Sin-
muballidh may have married a foreign wife.

2 "The Sun-god (is) our god," another Semitic name.

3 "The doer," also Semitic.

4 Kassite, interpreted "the family is established."

5 Uru-azagga is now represented by a part of the mounds of Telloh
(the ancient Sirpurla) or its immediate vicinity.

6 Nigas was an Elamite word.

7 Semitic, signifying "gracious is his god."

I 4 RECORDS OF THE PAST

4. Is-ki-pal. 1

5. Sussi. 2

6. Gul-ki-sar. 3

7. Kirgal-dara-mas, the son of the same.

8. A-dara-kalama, the son of the same. 4

9. A-kur-du-ana. 5

10. M elam-kurkura. 6

11. Ea-ga(mil ?). 7

12. i[i] kings of the dynasty of URU-AZAGGA.

1 Perhaps to be read in Semitic Sapin-mat-nukurti, ' ' the sweeper away
of the land of the foe." The name seems to have been a title.

2 Perhaps the Semitic sussu, "sixty."

3 In Semitic Muabbid-kissati, " the destroyer of hosts. "

4 Apparently, therefore, the son of the preceding king.

5 Rendered by the Semitic Abil-Bel-u' sum-same, " the son of Bel (the
lord) of the treasury of heaven."

6 " The glory of the world."

7 The last character is partially destroyed. If my restoration is correct,
the name would be Semitic and signify " Ea has rewarded."

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 15

No. 2. TRANSLATION OF THE SECOND
DYNASTIC TABLET FROM BABYLON

COLUMN i
The first eleven lines are destroyed.

12. ii kings [of the dynasty of BABYLON] for [294 years].

13. Anma[n] for [5]! (years).

14. Ki-AN [Nigas] for 55 (years).

15. Damki-ili[su] for 46* (years).

1 6. Is-ki-[pal] for 15 (years).

17. Sussi, (his) brother, for 27 (years).

1 8. Gul-ki-[sar] for 55 (years).

19. Kirgal-[dara-mas] for 50 (years).

20. A-dara-[kalama] for 28 (years).

21. A-kur-du-[ana] for 26 (years).

22. Melamma-[kurkura] for 6 (years).

23. Bel-ga[mil?] for 9 (years).

24. For 368 (years) the n kings of the dynasty of URU-

AZAGGA.

25. Gandis for 16 (years).

26. Agum-si[pak] his son for 22 (years).

27. Guya-si[pak] for 22 (years). 2

28. Ussi his son for 8 (years).

29. Adu-medas for ... (years).

30. Tazzi-gurumas for ... (years).

1 Mr. Pinches' copy gives 36 years.

2 Is this king merely a duplicate of his predecessor, the different
spelling of the name having caused the annalist to divide one king into two ?

1 6 RECORDS OF THE PAST

31. [Agum-kak-rimi l for ... years].

The next line of this column and the first thirteen lines of
the next are destroyed.

COLUMN n

14 for 22 (years).

15 for 26 (years).

1 6 for 17 (years).

17. Kara . . . 2 for 2 (years).

1 8. Gis-amme ... ti for 6 (years).

19. Saga-sal [tiy as] for 13 (years).

20. Kasbat his son for 8 (years).

21. Bel-nadin-sumi for i year (and) 6 months.
2 2. Kara-Urus 3 for i year (and) 6 months.

23. Rimmon-nadin-suma for 6 (years).

24. Rimmon-suma-natsir for 30 (years).

25. Meli-Sipak 4 for 15 (years).

26. Merodach-abla-iddin (Merodach-baladan) his son for

13 (years).

27. Zamama-nadin-sumi 5 for i (year).

28. Bel-suma . . . G for 3 (years).

29. For 576 (years) 9 months the 36 kings [of the dynasty

of the KASSiTEs]. 7

30. Merodach- .... for 1 7 (years).

1 Supplied from an inscription of the king himself, who styles himself
the son of Tassi-gurumas, the descendant of Abi . . . the son of Agum
. . . and the offspring of the god Suqamuna.

2 Identified by Dr. Oppert with Kudur - Bel, who, according to
Nabonidos, was the father of Sagasalti-buryas, the latter of whom reigned
800 years before himself (B.C. 1340). But the identification is doubtful,
since the names do not agree.

3 "The servant of Bel" (Kudur- Bel) in Kassite.

4 "The man of Merodach" in Kassite.

5 Zamama-nadin-sumi was a contemporary of the Assyrian king Assur-
dan-an (whose name should probably be read Assur-dan, and be identified
with that of Assur-dayan, the great-grandfather of Tiglath-Pileser I.)

6 Or Bel-nadin- . . .

7 The Kassites were a rude tribe of the Elamite mountains on the north-
east side of Babylonia. Noldeke has shown that they must be identified
with the Kossoeans of classical geography.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 17

31 for 6 (years).

The next line of this column and the first four of the next
are destroyed.

COLUMN in

5 for 22 (years).

6. Merodach-nadin- ... 1 for i year and 6 months.

7. Merodach-kul[lat] . . . 2 for 13 (years).

8. Nebo-nadin- ... for 9 (years).

9. For 72 (years and) 6 months the n kings of the

dynasty of IsiN. 3

10. Simmas-si[pak] for 18 (years).

11. Bel-mukin-[ziri] for 5 months.

12. Kassu-nadin-akhi for 3 (years).

13. For 21 (years and) 5 months the three kings of the

dynasty of the land of the Sea. 4

14. E-ulbar-sakin-sumi for 17 (years).

15. Uras-kudurri-[utsur] for 3 (years).

1 6. Si/am'm (?)-Suqamu[na] for 3 months.

17. For 20 (years and) 3 months the 3 kings of the dynasty

of BIT-[BAZI].

1 8. AN . . . [an ELAMITE] for 6 (years).

19 for 13 (years).

1 Perhaps Merodach-nadin-akhi, the antagonist of the Assyrian king
Tiglath-Pileser I. , 418 years before the conquest of Babylon by Sennacherib,
and consequently B.C. 1106.

- Perhaps the Merodach-sapik-kullat of the Synchronous Tablet, who
was a contemporary of Assur-bil-kala, the son of Tiglath-Pileser I.

3 Isin (PA-SE) was also called Pate' si (" the city of the high-priest" in
Babylonia), according to W. A. I., ii. 53, 13.

4 That is, the Persian Gulf. Merodach-baladan is described below as
also belonging to the dynasty of the country of the Sea, and his ancestral
kingdom was that of the Kalda or Chaldees in Bit-yagina among the
marshes at the mouth of the Euphrates.

VOL. I C

1 8 RECORDS OF THE PAST

20 for 6 months (and) 12 (days).

The nc.vt twelve lines of the column and the first line of the
fourth column are destroyed.

COLUMN iv

2. Nebo-suma-yukin [the son of Dakuri] for ... (years).

3. Nabu-[natsir] 1 for [14] (years).

4. Nebo-nadin-ziri 2 his son for 2 (years).

5. Nebo-suma-yukin his son for i month and 12 days.

6. The 31 [kings ?] 3 of the dynasty of BABYLON.

7. Yukin-zira of the dynasty of SASi 4 for 3 (years).

8. Pulu 5 for 2 (years).

9. Ulula 6 of the dynasty of TINU for 5 (years).

i o. Merodach-abla-iddina (Merodach-baladan) of the dynasty
of the country of the Sea for 1 2 (years).

1 1. Sargon for 5 (years).

12. Sin-akhe-erba (Sennacherib) of the dynasty of KHABI

the greater for 2 (years).

13. Merodach-zakir-sumi the son of Arad- . . . for i

month.

14. Merodach-abla-iddina a soldier of KHABI 7 for 6 months.

1 5. Bel-ebus of the dynasty of Babylon for 3 (years).

1 6. Assur-nadin-sumi of the dynasty of KHABI the greater

for 6 (years).

17. Nergal-zusezib for i (year).

1 The Nabonassar of Ptolemy's Canon, B.C. 747.

2 Called Nadinu in the Babylonian Chronicle.

3 Possibly we should supply "years" instead of "kings."

4 The annals of Tiglath-Pileser III show that we should read Sapi or
Sape. Yukinzira is the Khinziros of Ptolemy's Canon.

5 Pulu is the Pul of the Old Testament, the P6ros of Ptolemy's Canon.
His name is replaced by that of Tiglath-Pileser in the Babylonian
Chronicle, and the two years of his reign correspond with the two years
during which Tiglath-Pileser reigned over Babylonia.

6 The Shalmaneser of the Babylonian Chronicle and the Assyrian
monuments, the Ilulaios of Ptolemy's Canon.

7 Docs this imply that he was a different person from the famous
Merodach-baladan, the contemporary of Sargon and Hezekiah ?

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 19

1 8. Musezib-Merodach of the dynasty of BABYLON for 4

(years).

19. Sin-akhe-erba (Sennacherib) for 8 (years).

20. Assur-akhe-iddina (Esarhaddon) for [12 years].

21. Samas-suma-yukin (Saosdukhinos) for [20 years].

22. Kandal-[anu] (Khineladanos) for [22 years].

The rest of the tablet is destroyed.

20 RECORDS OF THE PAST

No. 3. TRANSLATION OF THE THIRD
DYNASTIC TABLET

01>V. COLUMN I

Only the ends of two lines in the middle have been preserved.

.... 600 (years) he reigned.
[The kings] (were) in all.

Obv. COLUMN ii

.... ili

(AN) Illadu * the son of the same for ... (years).
Mul-men-nunna ....
Kbit (?)-Kis the son of ....

Obv. COLUMN III

Is entirely lost. It contained about seventy lines.

Rev. COLUMN iv

[The dynasty] of BABYLON, [n kings for 294 years].
'Sumu-[abi for 15 years].
Zabu [for 14 years.]
Abil-Sin [for 18 years].
Sin-[muballidh for 30 years].

The next six lines are destroyed.

The i [ i kings of the dynasty of URU-AZAGGA].
For 3 [6 8 years].

An[man] ....
Ki[-AN-nigas] ....

The rest of the column is destroyed.

1 This was the Semitic reading ; the Accadian seems to have been
Pallil.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 21

Rev. COLUMN v
The marshmen (?) of the country of the sea (were) in all :

The 'leader of the marshmen (?) of the land of the sea

(was) Simmas-sipak the son of Erba-Sin ;
whose reign was prosperous : his god brought him aid ; for

17 years he reigned.

In the palace of Sargon (his corpse) was burned.
Ea-mukin-zira established himself as king, the son of

Kha'smar ; l for 3 months he reigned.
In the vestments of BIT-KHA'SMAR he was burned.
Kassu-nadin-akhi the son of Sappa 2 reigned for 6 years.

[He was burned] in the palace.
The 3 kings of the dynasty of the country of the Sea

reigned for 23 years.

[E]-ulbar-sakin-sumi the son of Bazi reigned for 1 5 years :
in the palace of KAR-MERODACH [he was burned].

[Uras]-kudurri-utsur the son of Bazi reigned for 2 years.

[Silanim]-Suqamuna the son of Bazi reigned for 3 months :
in the palace of Lu . . . SA [he was burned].

[The 3] kings of the dynasty of the house of Bazi reigned
for 20 years (and) 3 months.

a descendant of the race of ELAM reigned for

6 years.
In the palace of Sargon he was burned.

[One king] of the dynasty of ELAM reigned for 6 years.

The rest of the tablet is lost.

1 May also be read Kutmar. The word meant "a hawk" in the
Kassite language. 2 " The Sappite. "

22 RECORDS OF THE PAST

No. 4. TRANSLATION OF THE BABYLONIAN
CHRONICLE

Obv. COLUMN I

1. [In the 3d year of Nabonassar] king of BABYLON

2. [Tiglath-pileser] in ASSYRIA sat on the throne.

3. In the same year [Tiglath-pileser] descended into the

country of ACCAD, and

4. the cities of RABBIKU and KHAMRANU he spoiled,

5. and the gods of the city of SAPAZZA he carried away.

6. In the time of Nabu-natsir (Nabonassar) the town of

BORSIPPA

7. was separated from BABYLON. The battle which

Nabonassar

8. fought against BORSIPPA is not described. 1

9. In the 5th year of Nabu-natsir Umma(n)-nigas
10. in ELAM sat upon the throne.

11. In (his) 1 4th year Nabu-natsir fell ill and died 2 in his

palace.

12. For 14 years Nabu-natsir reigned over BABYLON.

1 3. Nadinu 3 his son sat upon the throne in BABYLON.

14. In the second year Nadinu was slain in an insurrection.

15. For two years Nadinu reigned over BABYLON.

1 6. Suma-yukin 4 the governor, the leader of the insurrec-

tion, sat upon the throne.

1 That is, in the history from which the writer extracted his chronicles.

2 Literally "fate" (overtook him).

3 The Nebo-nadin-ziri ("Nebo has given a seed") of the Dynastic
Tablet ; Nadios in Ptolemy's Canon.

4 Called Nebo-suma-yukin in the Dynastic Tablet.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 23

17. For 2 months and . . days Suma-yukin reigned over

BABYLON.

1 8. Yukin-zira . . . seized upon the throne.

19. In the 3d year of Yukin-zira Tiglath-pileser,

20. when he had descended into the country of ACCAD,

21. destroyed BIT-AMUKANU and captured Yukin-zira.

22. For 3 years Yukin-zira reigned over BABYLON.

23. Tiglath-pileser sat upon the throne in BABYLON.

24. In (his) 2d year Tiglath-pileser died in the month

Tebet. 1

25. For [22] years Tiglath-pileser the sovereignty over

ACCAD

26. and ASSYRIA had exercised. For two years he reigned

in ACCAD.

27. On the 25th day of the month Tebet Sulman-asarid

(Shalmaneser) in ASSYRIA

28. sat upon the throne. He destroyed the city of

SABARAHIN. 2

29. In (his) 5th year Sulman-asarid died in the month

Tebet.

30. For 5 years Sulman-asarid reigned over the countries

of ACCAD and ASSYRIA.

31. On the 1 2th day of the month Tebet Sargon sat upon

the throne in ASSYRIA.

32. In the month Nisan Merodach-baladan sat upon the

throne in BABYLON.

33. In the 2d year of Merodach-baladan Umma(n)-nigas
king of Elam

1 December.

2 Not to be confounded with 'Samerina or Samaria. M. Hale"vy may
be right in identifying it with the city of Sibraim mentioned in Ezek. xlvii.
1 6 as lying between Damascus and Hamath.

24 RECORDS OF THE PAST

34. in the province of DUR-ILI fought a battle against

Sargon king of ASSYRIA, and

35. caused a revolt from ASSYRIA : he overthrew them l

utterly.

36. Merodach-baladan and his army, which to the assistance

37. of the king of ELAM had gone, did not obtain a battle :

he arrived too late. 2

38. In the 5th year of Merodach-baladan Umma(n)-nigas

king of ELAM died.

39. [For 3 years] Umma(n)-nigas reigned over ELAM.

40. [Sutruk 3 -nankhun]du the son of his sister sat on the

throne in ELAM.
41 up to the loth year

The remaining lines of the column are destroyed.

COLUMN II

1. In the . . th year ....

2. A battle ....

3. For 1 2 years [Merodach - baladan reigned over

BABYLON]. 4

4. Sargon [sat upon the throne in BABYLON]. 4

The next fourteen lines are destroyed.

1 9. The Babylonians he did not oppress (?) 5 . . .

20. he (Sennacherib) was angry also with Merodach-baladan,

and [took him prisoner] ;

21. he devastated his country, and . . .

22. the cities of LARAK and SARRABA[NU G he destroyed].

1 That is, the Assyrians. The Annals of Sargon, on the other hand,
claim the victory for Assyria, though Babylonia was left in the hands of
Merodach-baladan.

2 Literally, "he undertook it too late" (ana arki itsbat- so).

3 The Elamite Sutruk was identified by the Assyrians with their god-
dess Istar.

4 So restored by Winckler. 6 Ikhmi 's.

6 See W. A. L, ii. 69, No. 5, 13. Larak was the Larankha of
Berossos, which the Greek writer seems to have confounded with Surippak
near Sippara.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 25

23. After his capture (Sennacherib) placed Bel-ibni upon
the throne in BABYLON.

24. In the first year of Bel-ibni Sennacherib

25. destroyed the cities of KHIRIMMA and KHARARATUM.

26. In the 3d year of Bel-ibni Sennacherib into the country

of ACCAD

27. descended, and devastated the country of ACCAD.

28. Bel-ibni and his officers he transported into ASSYRIA.

29. For 3 years Bel-ibni reigned over BABYLON.

30. Sennacherib his son Assur-nadin-suma

31. placed upon the throne in BABYLON.

32. In the first year of Assur-nadin-suma Sutruk-[nan]-

khundu l king of ELAM

33. was seized by his brother Khallusu who closed the

gate before him. 2

3 4. For 1 8 years Sutruk-[nan]khundu had reigned over ELAM.
35. His brother Khallusu sat upon the throne in ELAM.

36. In the 6th year of Assur-nadin-suma Sennacherib

37. descended into the country of ELAM, and the cities of

NAGITUM, KHILMI,

38. PELLATUM and KHUPAPANU he destroyed.

39. He carried away their spoil. Afterwards Khallusu the

king of ELAM

40. marched into the country of ACCAD and entered Sip-

para on the march (?).

41. He killed some people (but) the Sun-god did not issue

forth from the temple of E-BABARA.

42. He captured Assur-nadin-suma and he was carried to

ELAM.

43. For 6 years Assur-nadin-suma reigned over BABYLON.

1 Written Is-tar-khu-un-du. The Susian inscriptions of the king
himself write the name Su-ut-ru-uk-[ANJ-Nakh-khu-un-te.

2 That is, imprisoned him.

26 RECORDS OF THE PAST

44. The king of ELAM placed Nergal-yusezib in BABYLON

45. on the throne. He caused [a revolt] from ASSYRIA.

46. In the ist year of Nergal-yusezib, on the i6th day of

the month Tammuz, 1

47. Nergal-yusezib captured NiPUR 2 and occupied its

neighbourhood (?).

48. On the first day of the month Tammuz the soldiers of

ASSYRIA had entered URUK. S

COLUMN III

1. They spoiled the gods belonging to URUK as well as its

inhabitants.

2. Nergal-yusezib fled after the Elamites, and the gods be-

longing to URUK

3. as well as its inhabitants (the Assyrians) carried away.

On the yth day of the month Tisri 4 in the province
of NIPUR

4. he fought a battle against the soldiers of ASSYRIA and

was taken prisoner in the conflict, and

5. he was carried to ASSYRIA. For i year and 6 months

Nergal-yusezib

6. reigned over BABYLON. On the 26th day of the

[month Tisri ?]

7. against Khallusu king of ELAM his people revolted,

[the gate before] him

8. they closed. They slew him. For 6 years Khallusu

reigned over ELAM.

9. Kudur in ELAM sat upon the throne. Afterwards Sen-

nacherib

10. descended into ELAM and from the country of RASI as

far as

11. Bix-BuRNA 5 he devastated.

1 2. Musezib-Merodach sat upon the throne in BABYLON.

i June. " Now Niffer.

3 Now Warka, the Erech of Gen. x. 10. 4 September.

5 Bit-Burna (-KI) is called Bit Buna (-KI) in the annals of Sennacherib.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 27

13. In the first year of Musezib-Merodach on the iyth day

of the month Ab 1

14. Kudur king of ELAM was seized in an insurrection

and killed. For 10 months

15. Kudur had reigned over ELAM. Menanu in ELAM

1 6. sat upon the throne. I do not know the year 2 when

the soldiers of ELAM and ACCAD

1 7. he collected together and in the city of KHALULE a

battle against ASSYRIA

1 8. he fought, and caused a revolt from Assyria. 3

19. In the 4th year of Musezib-Merodach on the i5th

day of Nisan 4

20. Menanu king of ELAM was paralysed, 5 and

21. his mouth was seized and he was deprived of speech.

22. On the first day of the month Kisleu 6 the city [of BABY-

LON] was taken, Musezib-Merodach

23. was taken and led away to ASSYRIA.

24. For 4 years Musezib-Merodach reigned over BABY-

LON.

25. On the 7th day of the month Adar 7 Menanu king of

ELAM died.

26. For 4 years Menanu reigned over ELAM.

27. Khumma-khaldasu 8 in ELAM sat upon the throne.

28. In the eighth year of the king there was ... in Baby-

lon. On the 3d day of the month Tammuz

29. the gods belonging to ERECH went down from the city

of ERIDU 9 to ERECH.

1 July.

2 The chronicler's sources here failed him, but Winckler has pointed
out that the battle of Khalule must have taken place in either B.C. 691 or
690.

3 The annals of Sennacherib claim a complete victory for the Assyrians.

4 March.

5 Literally, " Tetanus constricted him" (misidtuv imisid, cf. W. A. I.,
ii. 27. 47, 48).

6 November.

7 February.

8 Called Umman-aldas in the Assyrian inscriptions.
y Eridu was on the coast of the Persian Gulf.

28 RECORDS OF THE PAST

30. On the 3d day of the month Tisri Khumma-khaldasu

the king of ELAM by the Fire-god

31. was stricken and perished through \\\Q power (?) of the

god. For 8 years Khumma-khaldasu

32. reigned over ELAM.

33. Khumma-khaldasu the second in the country of ELAM

sat upon the throne.

34. On the 2oth day of the month Tebet, 1 Sennacherib

king of ASSYRIA

35. by his own son 2 was murdered in an insurrection. For

[24] years Sennacherib

36. reigned over Assyria. From the 2oth day of the

month Tebet until

37. the 2d day of the month Adar is described as a

period of insurrection in ASSYRIA.

38. On the 8th day of the month Sivan 3 Assur-akhi-iddina

(Esar-haddon) his son sat on the throne in
ASSYRIA.

39. In the first year of Esar-haddon, Zira-kina-esir 4 of the

sea coast, 5

40. when he had laid fetters on the city of ERECH ; the city

of [ERECH ?]

41. destroyed in sight of the officers of ASSYRIA and [fled] to

the country of ELAM.

42. In ELAM the king of ELAM took him and [slew him]

with the sword.

43. In a month I do not know the officer called Gu-cnna

was ... in the city of NIPUR.

44. In the month Elul, the god Gu'si 7 and the gods [of the
city of . . .]

1 December.

2 It will be noticed that the chronicler speaks of only one son, whereas
two are named in the Old Testament. 3 May.

4 Called by Esar-haddon Nebo-zira-kina-esir (" Nebo has directed the
established seed "), the son of Merodach-baladan.

5 That is, of the Persian Gulf. 6 August.

7 "The god of the favourable mouth," a local divinity (perhaps be-
longing to Sippara, W. A. I., v. 31, 30), and identified with Uras (W. A.
I., ii. 57, 54).

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 29

45. proceeded to DUR-ILI ; [the gods of ]

46. proceeded to DUR-SARGON

47. In the month Adar the heads of

48. In the second year the major-domo

The next two lines are destroyed.

Rev. COLUMN iv

i akhe-sullim the Gu-enna.

2. ... [the Gimirjri J marched against ASSYRIA and in

ASSYRIA were slain.

3. ... the city of SIDON was taken ; its spoil was carried

away.

4. The major-domo mustered a gathering in ACCAD.

5. In the 5th year on the 26. day of the month Tisri the

Assyrian soldiers BAZZA 2

6. occupied. In the month Tisri the head of the king of

the country of SIDON

7. was cut off, and brought to Assyria. In the month

Adar the head of the king

8. of the countries of GUNDU and 'Si'sft 3 was cut off and

brought to ASSYRIA.

9. In the 6th year the king of ELAM entered SIPPARA.

He offered sacrifices. The Sun-god 4 from
10. the temple of E-BABARA did not issue forth. The Assy-
rians marched into EGYPT. ETHIOPIA was troubled. 5

1 So restored by Winckler. The Gimirra are the Gomer of the Old
Testament, the Kimmerians of classical writers.

2 Apparently the district of Arabia Petraea called Bazu by Esar-haddon,
Buz in the Old Testament.

3 Probably in Kilikia.

4 The Sun-god whose temple has been discovered by Mr. Hormuzd
Rassam in the mounds of Abu-Habba was the patron-deity of Sipar or
Sippara. Besides " Sippara of the Sun-god," there was a neighbouring
city called " Sippara of Anunit." The two together formed the Scriptural
Sepharvaim or " two Sipparas."

6 Mehikh imina.

30 RECORDS OF THE PAST

11. Khumma-khaldasu the king of ELAM without being

sick died in his palace.

12. For 5 years Khumma-khaldasu reigned over ELAM.

13. Urtagu his brother sat upon the throne in ELAM.

14. In a month I do not know Nadin-Suma the Gu-enna

15. and Kudur the son of Dakuri went to ASSYRIA.

1 6. In the 7th year on the 5th day of the month Adar the

soldiers of ASSYRIA marched into EGYPT.

1 7. In the month Adar Istar of the city of ACCAD and the

gods of the city of ACCAD

1 8. had departed from the country of ELAM and on the

loth day of the month Adar entered the city of
ACCAD.

19. In the 8th year of Esar-haddon in the month Tebet

on a day of which the date has been lost 1

20. the country of the RURIZA was occupied; its spoil was

carried away.

21. In the month Kisleu its spoil was brought into the city

of UR.

22. On the 5th day of the month Adar the wife of the

king died.

23. In the tenth year in the month Nisan the soldiers of

ASSYRIA marched into Egypt. 2

24. On the 3d day of the month Tammuz and also on

the 1 6th and i8th days

25. three times the Egyptians were defeated with heavy

loss. 3

26. On the 22d day Memphis, 4 the royal city, was cap-

tured.

2 7. Its king fled ; his son descended into the country of
[ETHIOPIA],

1 In the history from which the chronicler derived his account.

2 The chronicler notes here that the last character in the line was
wanting in his copy.

3 Literally, " massacres took place in Egypt."

4 Written Mcmbi.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 31

28. Its spoil was carried away; [its] men were [enslaved];
its goods were

29. In the nth year the king [remained] in ASSYRIA; his
officers .

30. In the 1 2th year the king of ASSYRIA

31. On the march he fell ill, and died on the loth day of

the month Marchesvan. 1

32. For 12 years Esar-haddon reigned over ASSYRIA.

33. Saul-suma-yukina in BABYLON, Assur-bani-pal in

ASSYRIA, his two sons, sat on the throne.

34. In the accession year of Saul-suma-yukina in the

month lyyar, 2

35. Bel and the gods of ACCAD from the city of ASSUR

36. had gone forth and on the nth day of the month

lyyar had entered into BABYLON.

37. In that year [against] the city of KlRMTUM 8 [there was

war] ; its king is conquered.

38. On the 2oth day of the month Tebet Bel-edir-;V (?)

in BABYLON is seized and put to death.

39. The first part (of the chronicle) has been written like

its original and has been made public.

40. The tablet of Ana-Bel-KAN the son of Libludhu

41. the son of Nis-Sin, by the hand of Ea-iddin the son of

42. Ana-Bel-KAN the son of Libludhu of Babylon,

43. the 5th day of the month . . . the 22d year of Darius

king of BABYLON,

44. the king of the world.

1 October. 2 April.

3 Apparently the city of Karbat in Northern Egypt, conquered by
Assur-bani-pal at the commencement of his reign.

32 RECORDS OF THE PAST

No. 5. TRANSLATION OF THE INSCRIPTION
GIVING THE ASSYRIAN INTERPRETATION
OF THE NAMES OF THE EARLY BABY-
LONIAN KINGS

Obv. COLUMN I

About forty lines lost.

1. [? Ur-Damu. Acc^\ " Man of the goddess GULA."

2. [? Babar-uru. Accl\ " The Sun-god protects."

3. [Ur- . .]la. Ace. " Man of the Moon-god."

4. [Ur-]Babara. Ace. " Man of the Sun-god."

5. [Is-ki-]pal. Ace. " Sweeper away of the hostile

country."

6. [Gul-ki-]sar. Ace. " Destroyer of hosts."

7. A-[dara]-kalama. Ace. " Son of the god EA king of

the land."

8. A-kur-du-ana. Ace. " Son of BEL (the mountain)

of the treasury of heaven."

9. Lugal-ginna. Ace. " Established king "(Sargon). 2

10. The queen Azag-Bau. " The goddess BAU is holy."

Ace.

1 1 . These are the kings who after the flood are not de-

scribed in chronological order.

1 2. Khammu-ragas. Kas? " Of a large family."

13. Ammi-didugga. Kas. "Of an established family."

14. Kur-gal-zu. Kas. " Be a shepherd."

1 That is, Accado-Sumerian.

2 The name of the king was really Sarganu (perhaps of the same origin
as the Biblical Serug), but his Accadian subjects misunderstood it, turning
it into Sarru-kinu, "established king," which was written in Sumerian
Lugal-ginna.

3 That is, Kassite or Kossoean.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 33

15. Simmas-sipak. Kas.

1 6. Ulam-bur-yas. Kas.

17. Nazi-Mumdas. Kas.

1 8. Meli-Sipak. Kas.

19. Burna-bur-yas. Kas.

20. Kara-Urus. Kas.

" Offspring of MERODACH."
" Offspring of the lord of the

world."

"The shadow of URAS."
" Man of MERODACH."
" Servant [of the lord of the

world]."
" Minister of [BEL]."

COLUMN II

About thirty -three lines are lost.

i [an-]khegal. Ace. "With MERODACH is life."

2 [an-]khegal. Ace. "With MERODACH is ver-
dure."

3. Lu-Silig-lu-sar. Ace. " Man of MERODACH."

4. Un-kur-Silig-alim. Ace. "The lord of the land is

MERODACH."
" The closer of the mouth is

MERODACH."

" MERODACH is an over-
shadowing god."

7. Sazu-ap-tila-nen-gu. Ace. "MERODACH has declared

life to him."

8. Ur-Nin-din-bagga. Ace. " Man of GULA [the goddess

of life and death]."
" Man of GULA."
"(Man of) the god PAP-

SUKAL." 1

" May his name live."
"The Moon -god has be-

5. Gu-sermal-Tutu. Ace.

6. Sazu-[AN]kusvu. Ace.

9. Khumeme. Ace.
10. Dili-khidu. Ace.

1 1 . Mu-na-tila. Ace.

12. Nannak-satu. Ace.

gotten."

13. Nannak-agal-duabi. Ace. "The Moon-god is strong

over all."

14. Labar-Nu-dimmud. Ace. "Servant of EA [lord of the

universe]."

15. Urudu-man-sun. Ace. "The god NUSKU has given."

1 Literally " the messenger of the treasury (of heaven)."
VOL. I D

34

RECORDS OF THE PAST

1 6. Kud-ur-Alima. Ace.

17. Dun-aga-ba-khe-til. Ace.

1 8. Damu-mu-as-khe-gal.
Ace.

1 9. Dun-gal-tur-tae. Ace.

20. Tutu-bul-anta-gal. Ace.

2 1 . Dugga-makh-Sazu. Ace.

22. Khedu-lamma-ra. Ace.

23. Mul-khe-sal. Ace.

24. Dimir-Uru-du.

25. Dimir-Uruk-du. Ace.

26. Dimir-Erida-du-ru. Ace.

11 Sweet are the loins of BEL."
"May BAU vivify her womb."
" May GULA be one name."

" May BAU establish great

and small."
"O MERODACH as a comrade

spare her (?)."
" Supreme is the word of

MERODACH."

"PAP-SUKAL is the colossos."
" May BEL be exalted."
"The Moon-god as son [of

the city UR]."
" The god who is the son of

[ERECH]."
"EA [as son of ERIDU, the

creator]."

The next two lines are destroyed.

Rev. COLUMN in
The first two lines are destroyed.

i a-edina. Ace. "The choir of the goddess

ZARPANIT."

2. 'Si-ru. Ace. " BEL has created."

3. Kur-nigin-garra- gurus- " URAS is their first-born."

nene. Ace.

4. Uras-saglitar 1 -zae-men. " URAS, thou art overseer."

Ace.

5. Uras - qalzi - nes - kiam - "URAS who loves constancy."

mama. Ace.

6. Mul-lil-ki-bi-gi. Ace. " BEL of Nipur has returned

to his place."

7. Laghlaghghi-Gar. Ace. " NEBO illuminates."

8. Kur-gal-nin-mu-pada. " The great mountain (BEL)

Ace. records the name."

1 The correct reading of this word is doubtful.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 35

9. Aba-Sanabi-dari. Ace.

10. Aba-Sanabi-diri. Ace.

11. Es-Guzi-gin-du. Ace.

12. Khu-un-zuh. Ace.
1 3. Nab-sakh-menna. Ace.
14. Massu-gal-Babara- gude.

15. Ur-Sanabi. Ace.

1 6. Lu-Damu. Ace.

17. Tutul-Savul. ^.

1 8. Nin-sakh-gu - nu- tatal.

Ace.
19. Agu-sag-algi. Ace.

20. Agu-ba-tila. Ace.

21. Larru-ningub-aL

22. Lubar-E-gir-azagga.

23. Bad-Mullilla.
2 4. Nanak-gula.

25. . . . nu-laragh-danga-

su-mu-aldibba. Ace.

26. [Es-Guzi-]kharsag-men.

Ace.

" Who is like BEL a bride-
groom."

" Who is like BEL (the lord)
of counsel."

"The temple of E-SAGGIL
the establishment of the
son."

" BEL who knows mankind."

"BEL, prosper me."

"What is shorn by RIMMON."

"The man of EA."
" The man of GULA."
"The Sun-god has mustered."
" PAP - SUKAL who changes

not (his) command."
"The Moon-god has given

a son." 1
" May the Moon-god vivify

what is below him."
"O BEL, defend the land-
mark."

"Servant of NERGAL."
" Minister of BEL."
" The Moon-god is great."
" (O Sun-)god, in difficulties
and dangers take my
hand."
"E-SAGGIL is our mountain."

More than thirty lines are destroyed here.

COLUMN IV

1. Ulam-Urus. Kas.

2. Meli-Khali. Kas.

" Offspring of BEL."
" Man of GULA."

1 The Assyro-Babylonian translation is a paraphrase, as in some other
instances. The Accado-Sumerian compound is literally : ' ' The Moon-god
has established a head."

RECORDS OF THE PAST

3. Meli-Sumu. Kas.

4. Meli-Sibarru. Kas.

5. Meli-Sakh. Kas.

6. Nimgirabi. Kas.

7. Nimgirabi-Sakh. Kas.

8. Nimgirabi-Buryas. Kas.

9. Kara-Buryas. Kas.

10. Kara-Sakh.

11. Nazi-Sipak.

12. Nazi-Buryas.

Kas.

" Man of the god SUQA-

MUNA."

" Man of the god SIMALIA."
" Man of the Sun-god."
" The merciful."
" Merciful is the Sun-god."
" Merciful is [BEL the lord

of the world]."
" Servant of [BEL lord of the

world]."

" Servant of the Sun-god."
[" Shadow of MERODACH."]
["Shadow of BEL lord] of

the world."

The remaining eight lines arc lost.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 37

No. 6. TRANSLATION OF THE ANNALS OF
SARGON OF ACCAD AND NARAM-SIN 1

OBVERSE

t. When the moon at its setting with the colour of a dust-
cloud 2 filled the crescent, the moon was favourable
for Sargon who at this season

z. marched against the country of ELAM and subjugated
the men of ELAM.

5. Misery (?) he brought upon them ; their food he cut
off.

4. When the moon at its setting filled the crescent with

the colour of a dust-cloud, and over the face of the
sky the colour extended behind the moon during
the day and remained bright,

5. the moon was favourable for Sargon who marched

against the country of [PHCENICIA], and

6. subjugated the country of PHCENICIA. His hand con-

quered the four quarters (of the world).

7. When the moon increased in form on the right hand
and on the left, and moreover [during] the day the
finger reached over the horns, 3

1 W. A. I. , iv. 34. The text has been translated in part by Mr.
George Smith. The astrological notices with which the account of
Sargon' s campaigns is associated are explained by the fact that the great
Chaldean work on astronomy and astrology was compiled for his library
at Accad, and that one of the objects of this work was to trace a connec-
tion between certain astronomical occurrences and the events which im-
mediately followed them.

2 Ana pikhirti-Su tsirip zakiki.

3 The moon lay Oil its back, and the distance from the extremity of
one horn to that of another was as much as a span.

38 RECORDS OF THE PAST

8. the moon was favourable for Sargon who at this season

produced /tfjy (?) [in] BABYLON, and

9. [like] dust the spoil of BAB-DHUNA was carried away

and

i o. ... he made ACCAD a city ; the city of .... he

called its name;
1 1. [the men of .... in the] midst he caused to dwell.

1 2. [When the moon] on the left the colour of fire

[on] the left of the planet, and

13. [the moon was favourable to Sargo]nwhoat this season

against the country of PHOENICIA

14. [marched and subjugated it]. The four quarters (of

the world) his hand conquered.

15. [When the moon] behind the moon the

four heads were placed,

1 6. [the moon was favourable to Sargon who at this season]

marched [against] the country of PHOENICIA and

1 7. [subjugated the country of PHOENICIA.] His [enemies ?]

he smote ; his heroes
1 8 in the gate of its 1 rising.

19. [When the moon was fixed?] and a span [the

moon was favourable to Sargon] as for whom at this
season the goddess [ISTAR]

20. [with favours] filled for him his hand the

goddess ISTAR [all countries]

21. caused him to conquer ; against Tiri (?) ....

22. [When the moon] appeared [like] a lion, the moon was

favourable to Sargon who at this season

23. was [very] exalted and a rival (or) equal had not; his

own country was at peace. Over

24. [the countries] of the sea of the setting sun 2 he crossed

and for 3 years at the setting sun

1 The Sun-god must be referred to. - The Mediterranean.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 39

25. [all countries] his hand conquered. Every place to

form but one (empire) he appointed. His images
at the setting sun

26. he erected. Their spoil he caused to pass over into

the countries of the sea. 1

2 7. [When the moon on] the right hand was like the colour
of gall, and there was no finger ; 2 the upper part
was long and the moon was setting (?),

28. [the moon was favourable for] Sargon who enlarged his

palace of Delight (?) by 5 mitkhu, and

29. established the chiefs [in it] and called it the House of

KiCwi-izallik?

30. When the moon was like a cloud '(?), like the colour of

gall, and there was no finger ; 2 on the right side was
the colour of a sword ; the circumference of the left
side was visible ;

31. towards its face on the left the colour extended; the

moon was favourable for Sargon against whom at
this season Kastubila of the country of KAZALLA
rebelled and against KAZALLA

32. (Sargon) marched and he smote their forces ; he ac-

complished their destruction.

33. Their mighty army he annihilated ; he reduced KAZALLA

to dust and ruins.

34. The station of the birds 4 he overthrew.

35. When the moon was like a cloud (?), like the colour of

1 We infer from this that Sargon had crossed over into Cyprus, and
there erected an image of himself. This might explain why his later name-
sake Sargon sent to the island a monument, which is now in Berlin.
General di Cesnola brought back from Cyprus a Babylonian cylinder of
haematite bearing the inscription, " Abil-Istar, the son of Ilu-Balidh, the
servant of the deified Naram-Sin." The cylinder was probably executed
either during the reign of Naram-Sin, or shortly afterwards, as the cult of
the king is not likely to have continued after the fall of his dynasty.

2 It could not be measured. 3 "Thus he has appointed."

4 What this refers to it is impossible to say. The expression can hardly
be metaphorical.

40 RECORDS OF THE PAST

gall, and there was no finger ; l on the right side was
the colour of a sword ; the circumference of the left
was visible ;

36. and against its face the Seven 2 advanced ; the moon

was favourable to Sargon, against whom at this
season

37. the elders of the whole country revolted and besieged

him in the city of ACCAD ; but

38. Sargon issued forth and smote their forces ; their de-

struction he accomplished.

REVERSE

1. Their numerous soldiery he massacred; the spoil that

was upon them he collected.

2. " The booty of Istar ! " he shouted.

3. When the moon had two fingers, and swords were seen

on the right side and the left, [and] might and peace
were on the left

4. its hand presented a sword ; the sword in its left hand

was of the colour of 'sukhuruni ; the point was held
in the left hand and there were two heads ;

5. [the moon] was favourable for Sargon who at this season

6. subjected the men of [the country] of 'Su-EDiN 3 in its

plenitude to the sword, and

7. Sargon caused their seats to be occupied, and

8. smote their forces ; their destruction he accomplished ;

their mighty army

9. he cut off, and his troops he collected ; into the city of

ACCAD he brought (them) back.,

10. [When the moon] had two fingers and on the right
side it was of the colour of a sword and on the left
it was visible ;

1 It could not be measured.

2 The Seven Evil Spirits who were supposed to cause eclipses of the
moon.

3 "The plain of the "Suti," or nomad tribes on the eastern side of
Babylonia.

DYNASTIC TABLETS OF THE BABYLONIANS 41

1 1. [and against its face] the Seven advanced ; (its) appear-

ance was of the colour of gall ; the moon was favour-
able for Naram-Sin

1 2. [who at] this season marched against the city of APIRAK.

and

1 3. [utterly] destroyed it : Ris-Rimmon the king of APIRAK

14. [he overthrew], and the city of APIRAK his hand con-

quered.

15. [When the moon] on the right it was of the

colour of a sword, and on the left it was visible ;

1 6. [and against its face the Seven advanced ?] ; the moon

was favourable for Naram-Sin who at this season

1 7. marched [against the country of MA]GANNA 1 and seized

the country of MAGANNA, and
1 8 the king of MAGANNA his hand captured.

19. [When against the moon] the Seven were banded, [and]

behind it

20 never may there be a son (?)

1 The Sinaitic Peninsula.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH
BY M. ARTHUR AMIAUD

TllE names of Telloh and of the French Consul M. de
Sarzec are no longer strange to the Orientalist of
to-day. The situation of the mounds, which have
hidden and preserved to our day the ruins of one of
the most ancient centres of civilisation, is well known.
The history of the excavations has been often written,
and I shall not dwell upon it. Nor shall I discuss
the results of these excavations from the point of view
of art or archaeology. This work has been undertaken
by a master hand in the Dfaouvertes en C/ialdee. 1 At
present I shall only essay to follow in the steps of
Dr. Oppert by making the monuments of stone and
brick tell their own tale, and by questioning them
summarily on the geography, history, politics, and
religion of their age and country. 2

I. The first question one thinks of asking is what
was the name of that flourishing city of ancient
Chaldaea which the Bedouin now knows only as

1 See also M. L6on Heuzey's Un Palais Chaldden (Paris, Leroux,
1888).

2 On all these points, see Rommel's Geschichte Babylonicns und
Assyriens (Berlin, 1885-87).

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 43

Telloh ? Considering that all the princes whose
names occur on the monuments are entitled "kings"
or " patesis" of Shirpurla-ki, it was generally answered
at first : This city was Shirpurla. 1 As often hap-
pens, the first impression has proved to be correct.
I was wrong in questioning the identification in an
article in the Zeitschrift fur KeilschriftforscJiung
(i. p. 151). I had remarked that except in the title
of the kings and patesis the name of Shirpurla -ki
appeared very rarely in the inscriptions of Telloh,
and that whenever a prince mentioned the site where
a temple was erected he gave it another name
Girsu-ki, Uru-azagga, Nina-ki, Gishgalla-ki. I now
believe, and shall attempt to prove, that Telloh really
represents the ruins of Shirpurla; that it was the
general name of a great centre of population, of which
Girsu-ki, Uru-azagga, Nina-ki, and Gishgalla-ki were
only divisions or quarters.

Let us first remove a hypothesis which could pre-
sent itself to the mind. Might not Shirpurla be the
name of a country, of which Girsu-ki and the three
other cities mentioned above were the chief places ?
This supposition is forbidden by the inscription of
the statue F of Gudea, which states formally that
Shirpurla was the beloved "city" of the goddess
Gatumdug (col. i., cases 15, 16). It is also forbidden

1 According to Mr. Pinches (Guide to the Kouyunjik Gallery, London,
1885, p. 7, note 2), Shir-pur-la-ki would be an ideographic mode of
writing the word Lagash. We should then perhaps have to compare
W. A. I. , ii. 52, a 6^, which seems to connect a city Lagashu-ki with Urama
or "Ur" (?).

44 RECORDS OF THE PAST

by W. A. I., ii. 61, 2, 37, where we learn that a temple
otherwise unknown was situated in Shirpurla-ki.

The list of temples given in this passage might
open the door to another hypothesis, which must be
removed in its turn, for it would be inconsistent with
the relations existing between Shirpurla and the four
other towns. In lines 34 and 35 two temples are
named as temples of Girsu-ki. If Girsu-ki had been
only a quarter of Shirpurla, would there not be some
inconsistency on the part of the Assyrian scribe in
saying : Such and such temples belong to Girsu-ki,
such another to Shirpurla-ki ? Might one not con-
clude that Shirpurla and the four other towns were
separate cities ?

Now it is certain that Gudea tells us (in the
inscription on statue C) that he has constructed the
temple of E-anna for the goddess Ninni or Istar in
Girsu-ki (col. 3, cases 11, 12). We further know that
the same Istar, the presiding deity of Erech, had a
celebrated temple in that city which also bore the
name of E-anna. Moreover, certain texts of Gudea
and Dungi, which mention the construction of temples
in Girsu-ki, come, it is believed, from other sites
than Telloh, some from Warka or Erech, others from
Babylon, from Zerghul and from Tel-Eed. But this
proves nothing in favour of Erech, and still less against
Telloh. From the fact that Istar had a temple named
E-anna at Erech, we cannot infer that the same god-
dess had not a temple of the same name in another
city. We know that Nebo had a temple called

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOII 45

E-Zida in Borsippa, and there were at least two
others of the same name at Babylon and Calah.

We cannot look for Nina-Id, any more than Girsu-
ki, outside Telloh, or identify it with the Assyrian
Nineveh. 1 As for the inscription cited by Dr. Hommel
in support of the contrary view, the Museum of the
Louvre possesses several similar ones discovered by
M. de Sarzec at Telloh. If the text translated by
Dr. Hommel does not come from Telloh, it must have
been moved from its original place, like the tablet of
black stone, with a Semitic inscription of Dungi,
believed to have been found at Nineveh, and accord-
ingly quoted by Dr. Hommel to show that the empire
of the kings of Ur extended as far as that city. The
text itself of the inscription, imperfectly copied by
Lenormant, proves that its primitive resting-place was
Cutha. 2 But yet more. Two princes of Shirpurla,
Uru-Kagina in his barrel-inscription, and Gudea in the
cylinder-inscription A, state that they have worked
upon a canal, Nina-ki-tum-a, "the favourite river of
the goddess Nina." In order to find this canal I
believe it will be useless to ascend as far as the
Khausser, the river of Nineveh, if we compare with
the context these lines of M. de Sarzec : " In going
from the Shatt-el-Hai' to the ruins, at 500 metres
from the enceinte of Telloh we meet with the bed of
an immense canal, still visible, though filled with
sand, running from N.W. to S.E. It is possibly the

1 The pronunciation of the name of the goddess Nina and of the city
called after her is still problematical.

2 See the Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, iii., p. 94.

46 RECORDS OF THE PAST

original channel of the Shatt-el-Hai', possibly also
some canal derived from that great artery, and intended
to supply the city with water." l

Uru-azagga and Gishgalla-ki still remain. The
first must be sought near Telloh, if not in Telloh
itself, since M. de Sarzec has found in the ruins : (i)
at least one brick commemorating the erection by
Gudea of a temple of the goddess Gatumdug situated
in Uru-azagga ; 2 (2) the forepart of a lion or griffon
of calcareous stone, which bears the same inscription
as the brick of Gudea, some insignificant variants
excepted ; 3 (3) a doorstep of the patesi Nammaghani,
intended for the temple of the goddess Bau, which the
inscriptions on several statues of Gudea place in Uru-
azagga; 4 (4) a buttress of the patesi Entena intended for
the temple of the goddess Gatumdug in Uru-azagga. 5
As for Gishgalla-ki, which is known only from two
passages in the inscription on the statue of Ur-Bau,
one of which calls the patesi " servant of the divine
king of Gishgalla-ki," and the other places in Gish-
galla-ki a temple of the goddess Ninni, its name even
remains an obscure problem. It must have been
some locality in Telloh or its immediate vicinity.
Otherwise the inscription of Ur-Bau would offer us
the only example in our texts of a foreign temple
constructed by the princes of Shirpurla, and the sole

1 Dfcouvertes en Chaldte, p. 12.

2 Not yet published.

3 I owe my knowledge of this fact, as well as of several others, to the
kindness of M. Heuzey.

4 Dtcouvertes en Chalctte, pi. 27, i.

5 Not yet published.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 47

example also of the title of "servant" of a foreign
god assumed by one of them.

It will now be easy for me to show that the four
centres, Girsu-ki, Uru-azagga, Nina-Id, and Gishgalla-
ki, were only quarters . of a large city, which bore the
name of Shirpurla-ki. Whenever the princes who
have reigned at Telloh wished to indicate the whole
of their capital or their domain, we shall see that they
called it Shirpurla-ki. Only when they preferred to
mark the extent of their domain by means of its
extreme or most important points, or when they
wanted to indicate a particular spot, they employed
the names Girsu-ki, Uru-azagga, Nina-ki, and Gish-
galla-ki.

It is thus that all call themselves " kings" or
"patesis" of Shirpurla-ki. There is but one excep-
tion, and only in one of the three inscriptions he has
left us ; Uru-Kagina entitles himself on his cylinder
"king of Girsu-ki." This exception can be easily
explained, since Girsu-ki was without doubt the most
important quarter of Shirpurla. It is thus again that
Gudea, wishing to inform us what were the distant
countries from which he derived the materials neces-
sary for the buildings of his capital, expresses himself
as follows : " By the power of Nina and Nin-girsu, to
Gudea who holds his sceptre from Nin-Girsu, the
countries of Magan, Melughgha, Gubi, and Nituk, rich
in trees of every species, have sent him at Shirpurla-ki
ships laden with all sorts of trees" (statue D, col. 4).
Thus, too, if I understand the passage rightly, after

48 RECORDS OF THE PAST

having enumerated the reforms which followed his
accession to the throne, he describes the peace result-
ing therefrom to his country : " On the territory of
Shirpurla-ki no one has sued him who has right
on his side ; a brigand has entered the house of no
one" (statue B, col. 5).

But if the same Gudea wants to insist on the peace
which he has given his country, and to prove that no
part of his city was excluded from his care, he tells
us: "Gudea, patesi of Shirpurla-ki, has proclaimed
peace from Girsu-ki to Uru-azagga" (statue G, col. 2).
So, too, in describing the position of a temple, the
princes of Telloh never say that it was situated in
Shirpurla, but more precisely in Girsu-ki, in Uru-
azagga, in Nina-ki, or in Gishgalla-ki.

It is very difficult at present to determine the
approximate situation in Telloh of these different
quarters. I will, however, make some suggestions in
regard to them.

The four tels or mounds on the west side of Telloh
perhaps represent the site of Nina-ki. From one of
them M. de Sarzec has recovered the beautiful bull
and the tablet of black stone which bear the name of
Dungi, and mention the erection of the temple of the
goddess Nina. All the other tels, including the great
tel on which stood the palace, appear to have formed
part of Girsu-ki. It is in this region that bronzes
and votive tablets have been discovered with the
names of the god Nin-Girsu and of his sons Gal-alim
and Dun-shagana ; now we cannot doubt, though we

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 49

are not directly assured of it, that the temples of
these three gods were situated in Girsu-ki. As for
Uru-azagga, it is not certain that it lay in the part of
Telloh excavated by M. de Sarzec. With the exception
of some statues, which have certainly not been found
in their original position, the monuments intended,
according to their inscriptions, for this quarter of
Shirpurla-ki are little numerous ; and some, if not
all, appear to have been displaced, and, to use the
expression of M. Heuzey, to have been replaced by
the successive occupants of Telloh, which was still in-
habited in the Parthian epoch. Nothing can be said
concerning Gishgalla-ki, which is mentioned only on
the statue of Ur-Bau.

II. We now possess the names of twelve or thirteen
princes of Shirpurla, four or five of whom bear the
title of "king," and eight the title of "patesi." M.
Heuzey has shown by arguments derived from the
more archaic character of their monuments and writ-
ing that the most ancient of these princes were the
kings. He has also established that among the
patesis the group comprising Entena and En-anna-
tumma was the oldest The script used by these
patesis is still linear like that of the kings, and not
yet cuneiform like that of the later princes. Of
course I refer only to the inscriptions engraved on
hard materials, bronze or stone. For we possess a
clay cylinder of the king Uru-Kagina, where the
wedge already appears as distinctly as on the bricks
and cylinders of Gudea. We know that it is just by
VOL. I E

So RECORDS OF THE PAST

the form of the stylus employed by the scribes when
writing upon soft clay that the wedge which charac-
terises the cuneiform script is explained. It is by
imitation only that it has passed from writing on clay
to writing on stone.

The dynasties of Telloh were the following :

(1) Kings of Shirpurla-ki :

The earliest king known is perhaps Ur-Nina, " the
man of Nina," of whom we have three inscriptions.
This prince was the son of a personage called Nini-
ghal-gin (the reading Ghal-gin being uncertain). It is
doubtful whether Nini-ghal-gin had himself been king,
since his son never gives him the title of sovereign.

After Ur-Nina, according to the " Stele of the Vul-
tures," his son, A-Kurgal (" the son of Bel " ?) reigned.

Another passage in the Stele of the Vultures
appears to mention a certain Igi-ginna (" he who goes
before ") as king of Shirpurla.

So far as we can judge from the writing, it was
after these monarchs that Uru-kagina reigned, 1 whose
three inscriptions have come down to us. Two of
them call him " king of Shirpurla " ; in a third, on a
clay cylinder, he bears, as was first recognised by Dr.
Oppert, the title of " king of Girsu-ki." :

(2) Patesis of Shirpurla-ki :

The first series comprises three patesis, whose suc-

1 See licuzey : " Un nouvcau roi de Tello," in the Revue Archdologiquc
of 1884.

- It would seem that a prince more ancient than Uru-Kagina and per-
haps as ancient as Ur-Nina bore the title of " patesi" and not of " king."
But his name still remains unknown. See below, p. 67.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 51

cession cannot at present be exactly determined.
The museum of the Louvre possesses a portion of a
buttress inscribed with the name of a patesi Entena,
who does not record the name of his father, and
another block bearing the name of a patesi En-anna-
tumma, son of a patesi Entena. As the British
Museum possesses a block inscribed by a patesi
Entena, son of a patesi En-anna-tumma, we have a
choice of two hypotheses. Either the patesi Entena
of the British Museum is the same as the patesi
Entena of the Louvre, in which case the succession
will be: En-anna-tumma I, Entena, and En-anna-
tumma II ; or else the Entena of the British Museum
is the grandson of that of the Louvre, the order of the
patesis being Entena I, En-anna-tumma, Entena II.

Later in date than this family of princes comes
the patesi Ur-Bau (" man of Bau ") whose statue is in
the Louvre, together with a number of monuments
of less importance.

A short time after Ur-Bau comes Gudea (" the
elect"), followed by his son and probable successor
Ur-Nin-girsu (" man of Nin-girsu "). 1 It is of Gudea
that the larger and more important part of the monu-
ments of Telloh preserve the memory : eight statues,
two large cylinders of clay, and hundreds of frag-
ments or small texts. Of his successor we have a
few bricks and a small object of uncertain use.

Here must be placed, I believe, the patesi Nam-

1 Cf. Ledrain : Communication a I' Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-
Lettres, i2th July 1882.

52 RECORDS OF THE PAST

maghani (" His supremacy") whose reign is assigned
by Dr. Hommel to a period before Ur-Bau. But
his monuments are too few (only a door-step and
some bricks) to allow us to determine with certainty
his relative date.

M. Heuzey has also made us acquainted with an-
other patesi, Luka-ni (" His glory "). 1 His son Ghala-
lam ma, who does not, like his father, take the title of
patesi, offers homage in an inscription on the fragment
of a statue to Dungi, king of Ur. 2

It is difficult to determine, even approximately, to
what remote epoch the dynasties of Telloh must be
referred. We gather but little from the fact that the
son of one of the last patesis of Shirpurla was the con-
temporary of Dungi. For we cannot yet fix the age of
the early kings of Ur. Let me, however, hazard a
hypothesis, in consideration of any light it may throw
on the dark problem of Chaldean chronology.

I have already had occasion to cite an inscription
of Gudea (on statue D) in which this patesi tells us
that he received from "the countries of Magan, Me-
lughgha, Gubi, and Nituk," vessels laden with all sorts
of trees. The situation of Nituk is known. It was
the Isle of Tilmun 3 in the Persian Gulf. It is not

1 " Le Roi Dounghi " in the Revue Archdologique, April 1886.

2 I omit a patesi of Shirpurla, En-anna, made known to us by George
Smith in his Early History of Babylonia, and two other patesis whose
names are quoted by Dr. Hommel from some seals (Geschichte Dab. und
Ass., pp. 290, 293). The text translated by George Smith has not yet
been published, and the reading of the inscriptions on the seals does not
seem absolutely certain.

3 [Identified with the Tylos of classical geography by Dr. Oppert, and
with the modern Bahrein by Sir H. Rawlinson, though Professor Delitzsch

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 53

possible, in my opinion, to look for Magan and Me-
lughgha anywhere else than in the vicinity of the
Sinaitic Peninsula. 1 Gubi, sometimes written Gubin,
alone remains, which Dr. Hommel would identify
with Byblos in Phoenicia, the Gapuna of the hiero-
glyphic texts. I should, however, prefer to see in
Gubi a name of Egypt, and more precisely the name
of Coptos, the ancient Qubti. Gudea would thus in
his list of names have followed the route of his
vessels, starting from the most distant points to the
north of the Red Sea, coasting along Egypt and
turning round Arabia. If the identification of Gubi
or Gubin with Qubti meets with the approval
of Egyptologists and Assyriologists, the reign of
Gudea might perhaps be placed in the interval
between the sixth Egyptian dynasty, when the
monuments of Pepi seem already to testify to the
commercial importance of Coptos, 2 and the eleventh,
when the cities of Upper Egypt obtained political
supremacy. No one of course will dream of bringing
the reign of Gudea down to a later date.

How must we explain the fact that the last princes
of Shirpurla contented themselves with the title of
" patesi," while the most ancient took that of " king " ?
I believe that it is difficult not to see in this fact an
indication of the loss of its earlier independence on

considers it to form part of the delta which has accumulated at the mouth
of the Euphrates. Ed.}

1 This is the opinion long ago maintained by Messrs. Lenormant,
Oppert, and Sayce. M. Delattre has ably defended it in the memoir
L ' Asie occidental dens les Inscriptions Assyriennes, pp. 149 seq.

2 See Maspero : Histoire ancienne (4th edit.), p. 81.

54 RECORDS OF THE PAST

the part of Shirpurla and of its subjection to some other
city, probably Ur. All the other instances we have of
the use of the title of " patesi," lend it the sense of "lieu-
tenant" before the name of a country, of "vicar" before
a divine name. 1 We possess inscriptions in which the
patesis of Nipur and of Ishkun-Sin acknowledge their
dependency on the kings of Ur. Nebuchadnezzar II
calls himself the patesi of the god Merodach, Sargon
the patesi of the god Assur. The title of the earliest
sovereigns of Assyria, " patesi of the god Assur,"
defines their power as being that either of a king-
dom predominantly religious, or of a viceroyalty
under a suzerain, who was without doubt Babylonian.
It always implies the idea of lieutenant or dependant.
Why should we admit an exception in the case of
Shirpurla ? It is true that Gudea comes before us as
a powerful prince. In one of his inscriptions (statue
B) he boasts of having overthrown the city of Anshan
in the land of Elam. But for aught we know he
may have made this expedition in the company of
his suzerain. Dependence, moreover, admits of de-
grees, and it can even be purely nominal. France
has known powerful vassals who have resisted
royalty.

III. The campaign of Gudea in Elam, in the course
of which the city of Anshan was captured, is the only
fact of military history of which we know. We have
a little better information, thanks to two inscriptions

1 [I should rather render it " High-Priest." See my Lectures on the
Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, pp. 59-60. --Ed.~\

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 55

of the same patesi (those of statue B and cylinder A),
concerning the commercial relations of his country.
Unfortunately it is always very difficult to identify the
geographical names recorded in the texts.

From a passage cited above it appears that Shir-
purla enjoyed commercial intercourse with the coun-
tries of Nituk, Gubi or Gubin, Magan, and Melughgha.
These four countries furnished Chaldaea with wood for
building. But Melughgha also furnished gold, and
Magan a hard stone, diorite, which was employed by
the sculptors. Chaldaea was also in connection with the
country of Martu, that is to say, with Phoenicia and
Syria. From a mountain which seems to have been
Amanus, it derived cedars and other trees ; from two
other mountains of Martu Susalla and Tidanum l
two species of stones. It is stones again that were
imported from a mountain of Barsip, which I should
look for in the neighbourhood of the Syrian city of
Til-Barsip. For I believe that it is the same country
as that which appears in W. A. L, ii. 53, a 3, under
the varying forms of Barsip-ki and Bursip-ki. We
know that the name of Til-Barsip was also written
Til-Bursip. The inscription of statue B, moreover,
tells us that the stones coming from Barsip were con-
veyed in vessels which, according to my view, would
have had only to descend the Euphrates. I am greatly
tempted to ascend still farther to the north, towards
the sources of this river, in order to find two other coun-

1 The reading Susalla is uncertain. Dr. Hommel has compared Tid-
anum with Tidnu, the Sumerian equivalent of Akharru (the Semitic term
for Syria).

56 RECORDS OF THE PAST

tries the city of Ursu-ki, in the mountains of Ibla (or
rather, Tilla *), which furnished wood, and Shamalum,
or Shamanum, in the mountains of Menua, which fur-
nished stones. But I can suggest nothing in regard
to three other geographical names which I shall con-
fine myself to mentioning : the mountain of Ghaghum,
from whence Gudea procured gold; the city of Abullat
or Abulla-Abishu (" the great gate of his fathers "),
situated in the mountains of Ki-mash, 2 whence he
procured copper ; and the country or city of Madga,
in the mountains of the river Gurruda (?), 3 from whence
he procured a product whose precise nature I am
unable to determine.

Certain cities of Babylonia are mentioned in our
texts. They are the three ancient cities of Eridu
(Nuu-ki), Larrak (Barbar-kt), and the unknown city
of Kinunir-ki. They always appear to figure as
sacred cities, and the last of the three only after the
name of a goddess, Duzi-abzu, "the mistress of
Kinunir."

The names of the Euphrates and Tigris frequently
occur on the two cylinders of Gudea. I believe I
have also found in them the names of Shumer and
Accad " Kiengi " and " Ki-burbur." But it is not

1 Dr. Hommel has proposed to read Dalla.

2 [Ki-mash seems to be "the country of Mas," or Arabia Petraea ;
comp. the Mash of Genesis x. 23. The Babylonians derived a name for
"copper," kemassu, from its Sumerian appellation. /;'</.]

3 Can the river Gurruda have been the Dead Sea, and can the product
derived from the neighbouring district have been bitumen, as Dr. Hommel
has conjectured ? It is not probable that all the bitumen required for the
buildings of Babylonia was exclusively provided by the little river of Hit.
(See Hdt. i. 179.)

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 57

yet possible for me to translate the passages where
they are found.

The inscription of statue B mentions two seas.
" After he had caused the temple of Nin-girsu to be
built, Nin-girsu, the lord beloved by him, has forcibly
opened for him the roads from the sea of the high-
lands to the lower sea." The "sea of the highlands "
is evidently the Persian Gulf, and it is impossible to
doubt that by the " lower sea " is intended the Medi-
terranean.

IV. For a knowledge of the pantheon of Shirpurla-
ki we possess a document of a very great value.
This is the list of divinities at the commencement of
the imprecatory formula in the inscription on statue B
of Gudea. The following are the names of the divi-
nities, which it is important to give in the order,
evidently sacred, in which they are enumerated in
the inscription :

Anna, the Sky-god, the Anu of the Semites ;
Ellilla or Bel, " the lord of the mountain of the world," l
where the seat of the gods was placed, as well as the
habitation of the dead, also called " the father of the
gods ; " Nin-gharsag or Belit, " the mistress of the
mountain," the wife of Ellilla, and mother of the gods ;
En-ki or Ea, " the lord of the earth" and the waters ;

En-zu, or Sin, the Moon-god, the eldest son of
Ellilla ; Nin-girsu or Ninib, the Chaldean Hercules,
the son and warrior of Ellilla ; Nina, the daughter of
Ea, who has the same titles as Nin-dara, and may

1 In an abbreviated form, " the lord of the world."

58 RECORDS OF THE PAST

therefore be regarded as the consort of this god ;
Nin-dara, who is the god Ninib l under another name ;
Gatumdug, the daughter of Anna, who is the goddess
Bau under another name ; Bau, daughter of Anna
and wife of Nin-girsu ; Ninni or Nana, the Ishtar of
the Semites, another daughter of Anna ; Shamash,
the Sun-god, the son of En-ki or Ea ; Pasagga, the
Ishum of the Semites, who is undoubtedly only an-
other form of Gibil, the Fire-god, the son of En-ki or
Ea ;

Gal-alim, the son of Nin-girsu ; Dun-shagana,
another son of Nin-girsu ; Nin-mar-ki, the eldest
daughter of Nina ;

Duzi-abzu, "lady of Kinunir-ki;" Nin-gish"-zida,
the god of Gudea.

It will be observed that this list arranges the
divinities in three generations. In the first come the
four great gods, including a goddess, distinguished
also by the later Assyro-Babylonian religious systems,
and from whom all the other gods proceed. Next
are placed the sons and daughters of these deities.
Lastly come the grandchildren. I have been obliged
to put Duzi-abzu and Nin-gish-zida by themselves,
since no text has as yet given us any information con-
cerning them. 2 But we may believe that one of them
Nin-gish-zida must be mentioned at the end of the

1 [Or Uras. Ed.}

2 If our Duzi-abzu is a goddess and her title of "lady of Kinunir-ki "
does not allow us to doubt it it is clear that we cannot identify her with
the god Duzi-abzu who is named in W. A. L, ii. 56, 33-38, as one of the
six sons of Ea. It is necessary to understand six sons in this passage, and
not six children, since the following line names " a daughter" of Ea.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 59

list, whatever may have been his rank in the divine
family, since, as we shall see, he was the special deity
of Gudea and his intercessor with the other gods.

The preceding list does not give all the gods
mentioned in the texts of Telloh ; some even are
absent who had their temples in Shirpurla. Without
pretending to be complete, I may further enumerate
the god Nin-agal, who is only another form of En-ki ;
the god Shidlamta-ena, another name of Nin-girsu,
and the Nergal of the Semites ; the god Nin-sar, yet
another name of Nergal ; the goddess Nin-tu, another
designation of Nin-gharsag ; the god Uru-ki or Sin ;
the god Nirba; perhaps the god Nin-shagh, Pap-sukal;
a god called the "king" of Gishgalla-ki ; a goddess
Ku-anna; a god Dun-sir (?)-anna ; seven sons of
Bau, who are termed Zazaru (or Zazauru), Im-ghud-
ena, Ur-un-ta-ena (or Gim-nun-ta-ena), Ghi-gir-nunna,
Ghi-shaga, Gurmu, and Zarmu.

In a learned article in the Zeitschrift filr Assyri-
ologie (ii. pp. 179 seq^ Prof. Tiele has shown that at
Babylon, by the side of the local god Bel-Merodach
and even in his temple of E-shagil, his wife and son
Zarpanit and Nebo were also adored ; that at Bor-
sippa, by the side of the supreme god Nebo and in
his temple of E-Zida, his consort Nana was wor-
shipped. If we remember that other temples existed
at Babylon dedicated to various other deities, we shall
readily admit that the cult rendered to these gods
was offered by reason of their being the mother, the
brothers, or the sisters of the principal divinity. We

60 RECORDS OF THE PAST

may remark, moreover, that the supreme god of the
national or local pantheon was hardly ever one of the
primordial deities. The latter, indeed, appear to me
to have been born after their sons, in consequence of
the need experienced by the mind of man to establish
for his god a family analogous to his own, with
parents, wife, and children. The two exceptions
which may be instanced from Nipur and Eridu are
not certain. Dr. Hommel has remarked that one text
at all events names Ninib and not Bel as the chief
divinity of Nipur. As for Eridu, I do not feel sure
that the principal deity there was really Ea. This
god had certainly a temple in Eridu, just as he had
at Shirpurla-ki, but in both cities it was under the title
of the divine father that he was adored. The very
interesting inscription on a brick of a patesi of Eridu,
named Idadu, which is unfortunately still unpublished,
would lead us to suppose that the chief god of the
place was Nin-Eridu, possibly a name of Merodach. 1

The supreme god of Shirpurla was Nin-girsu,
whose consort was the goddess Bau. Both were
worshipped under different titles. Besides the temples
in which he was invoked as Nin-girsu, he had others
in Girsu-ki, where he was known as Nin-dara and
Shidlamta-ena. Similarly the goddess was not only
adored as Bau, but she was also worshipped in Uru-
azagga as Gatumdug and in Nina-ki as Nina. Three
at least of the parent gods had sanctuaries in Shir-

1 See George Smith in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical
Archceology, i. p. 32.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 61

purla, Ellilla (called specially "the father of Nin-
girsu"), En-ki, and "the mother of the gods," Nin-
gharsag. Temples were even dedicated to En-ki
under his two titles of En-ki and Nin-agal. We may
question whether it was in virtue of her being his wife
or his sister that Ninni possessed a temple in Girsu-
ki and another in Gishgalla-ki ; and also whether Nin-
gish-zida, in his special temple at Girsu-ki, was wor-
shipped as being a brother of the god or as being the
god himself under a fourth manifestation. It is cer-
tain,on the other hand, that Gal-alim and Dun-shagana
had each a temple because they were the sons of
Nin-girsu, and that Nin-mar-ki had one because she
was the daughter of Nina. We do not know at pre-
sent what were the grounds of relationship which
caused temples to be erected in Girsu-ki to the god-
desses Ku-anna 1 and Duzi-abzu. It is possible that
some of these numerous temples were only chapels
situated in E-ninnu, the favourite sanctuary of Nin-
girsu ; those, for example, which belonged to the sons
of the god.

While regarding Nin-girsu as the supreme object
of his cult, as "his king," to use the stereotyped ex-
pression, each prince of Shirpurla-ki selected also a
special deity from among the divine family, who acted
as his intercessor with Nin-girsu. 2 We are acquainted
with the deities of five of these princes. That of Uru-

1 Consort of the god Martu, according to the Collection de Clercq, cyl.
114. Cf. W. A. I., iii. 67, b 35.

2 See more especially the last lines of inscription No. i of King Uru-
Kagina. M. Heuzey has drawn my attention to the lines, which have been
translated for the first time by Dr. Oppert.

62 RECORDS OF THE PAST

Kagina was perhaps Nin-shagh or Pap-sukal though
the reading is doubtful ; that of Enteha and En-
anna- tumma was Dun-sir(?)-anna ; that of Ur-Bau
was Nin-agal ; that of Gudea, Nin-gish-zida.

We have not yet succeeded in ascertaining the
exact sense of the various appellations of Nin-girsu
and his wife Bau ; it is consequently impossible to
define with precision the character and personality
of these divinities. We may admit, however, that
Nin-girsu was a solar deity, personifying more par-
ticularly the sun when veiled in clouds ; hence the
combative and military aspect of the god. Like
Apollo, with whom he would be more fitly compared
than with Hercules, he was at once an avenger and
a saviour, a huntsman, and perhaps a shepherd.
As for Bau, who was termed " the mother " par ex-
cellence, and to whom were given the titles of " good
lady," " Mistress of Abundance," she was a terrestrial
divinity, resembling in many points the Demeter of
the Greeks. It is even possible that like Demeter
she presided also over Hades, and not only over the
living and fertile earth. Two of our texts mention
a festival of Bau, which occurred, if I understand the
passage aright, at the commencement of the year ;
and it appears to result from another inscription that
the chief festival of Nin-girsu took place at the same
time. Indeed it is probable that it was at the be-
ginning of the year, at the vernal equinox, that the
cities of Babylonia and Assyria alike celebrated the
festivals of their gods.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 63

The following translations comprise almost all
the texts hitherto brought from Telloh, with the
exception of the inscription on the so-called Stele of
the Vultures and those on the two large cylinders of
Gudea.

Restorations of the text are indicated by brackets
[ ]. Words placed in parentheses ( ) have been
added in order to render the sense more intelligible.

Certain of the inscriptions have been published
in Decouvertes en Chaldee, par E. de Sarzec, edited by
L. Heuzey, of which the first two parts have appeared
in 1884 and 1887.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TEL-LOH
I. THE INSCRIPTIONS OF KING UR-NINA

NO. I. 1 COLUMN I

1. Nina-ur

2. king

3. of SHIRPURLA,

4. son of Nini-ghal-gin,

5. the temple of the god NIN-GIRSU

6. has erected.

7. The Ib-gal (?)

8. he has erected.

9. The temple of the goddess NINA
10. he has erected.

COLUMN II

1. The Sig-nir (?)

2. he has erected.

3. His tower in stages (?)

4. he has erected.

5. The temple of ^1 ...

6. he has erected. A

7. The temple of E-GHUD

8. he has erected.

9. His observatory (?)
10. he has erected.

1 Ddcouvertes en Chaldde, pi. 2, No. i. Translated by Dr. Oppert in
a Communication to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, 2d
March 1883.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 65

COLUMN III

? [The palace]

1. of the Ti-ash-ra (?)

2. he has erected.

3. The temple of the goddess GATUMDUG

4. he has erected.

5. The great apzu l

6. he has constructed.

7. After that the temple of NIN-GIRSU

8. he has caused to be erected

9. seventy great measures (?) of corn
i o. in his house of fruits

COLUMN IV

? [he has stored up.]

1. From MAGAN 2

2. the mountain 3

3. all sorts of wood he has imported.

4. The castle 4 of SHIRPURLA

5. he has built.

6. The small apzu

7. he has constructed ;

COLUMN v

? [in the temple]

1. of the goddess NINA, lady of destinies (?),

2. he has placed it.

3. Two statues (?)

4. he has set up (?);

5. these two statues (?) . . .

Lacuna.

1 [The apzu, or "deep," was the basin for purification attached to a
Babylonian temple, corresponding to the "sea" of Solomon. Ed.]

2 The Sinaitic Peninsula, perhaps including Midian.

3 Or " the country." 4 Or "wall."

VOL. I F

66 RECORDS OF THE PAST

NO. 2. 1 COLUMN I

1. Nina-ur

2. the king

3. of SHIRPURLA,

4. son of Nini-ghal-gin,

5. the habitation (?) of GIRSU

COLUMN II

1. has constructed.

2. The bricks of the foundation (?)

The inscription breaks off here.

No. 3. 2 COLUMN i

1. Nina-ur

2. the king

3. of SHIRPURLA,

COLUMN II

i . the son of Nini-ghal-g[in].

1 Dtcouvertes, pi. 2, No. 2. Translated by Dr. Hommel, Geschichte
Babyloniens und Assyriens, p. 285.

2 L. Heuzey, "Les Rois de Tello," in the Revue Archtologique, Nov.
1882.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 67

II. INSCRIPTION OF AN UNKNOWN PRINCE ON A

BOULDER OF STONE 1

COLUMN I

Lacuna.

1. [pate]si

2. [of SHIRPUR]LA

COLUMN II

1. [of the god] NIN-GIRSU

2. [the . . . ] dun

3. has constructed.

4. The palace of Ti-ra-ash-di (?)

5. he has built,

6. and he has . . .

7. E-an-[na]-du 2

8. covered with renown

COLUMN III

1. by the god NIN-GIRSU,

2. for the countries

3. by the power of the god NIN-GIRSU

The last lines are destroyed.

1 Ddcouvertes, pi. 2, No. 3. The writing used in this inscription
resembles that of the inscriptions of Ur-nina and the Stele of the Vultures
more than any other. However, the little that remains of the first column
seems to indicate that it belongs to a patesi and not to a king, perhaps to
an E-anna-du.

2 This proper name is mutilated, but I believe my reading very prob-
able. Cf. the Stele of the Vultures, Obv. i. i.

68 RECORDS OF THE PAST

III. INSCRIPTIONS OF URU-KAGINA

NO. I. 1 COLUMN I

1. For the god NIN-GIRSU

2. the warrior of the god ELLILLA,

3. Uru-Kagina,

4. the king

5. of SHIRPURLA-KI,

6. his temple

7. has constructed.

8. His palace of Ti-ra-ash

9. he has constructed.

COLUMN II

1. The an-ta-shur-ra

2. he has constructed.

3. The E-gish-me-ra

4. in order to [be] the E-ne-bi of the countries

5. he has constructed.

6. The house of fruits which produces abundance (?)

in the country

7. he has constructed.

8. For the god DUN-SHAGANA

9. his habitation of AKKIL

COLUMN III

1. he has constructed.

2. For the god GAL-ALIMMA

3. the temple of E-ME-GAL-GHUSH-AN-KI

4. he has constructed.

1 From a squeeze in the Louvre. Translated by Dr. Oppert in a
Communication to the Acaddmie des Inscriptions, agth February 1884.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH

69

The temple of the goddess BAU 1
he has constructed.
For the god ELLILLA
the temple of E-ADDA, 2
his im-sag-ga,

COLUMN IV

1. he has constructed.

2. The Bur(?)-sag,

3. his temple which rises to the entrance of heaven (?),

4. he has constructed.

5. Of Uru-Kagina,

6. the king

7. of SHIRPURLA-KI,

8. who the temple of E-NINNU

9. has constructed,
10. his god

COLUMN v

i.

2.

3-

4-

5-
6.

is the god NIN-SHAGH. S

For the life of the king

during the long days to come

before the god NIN-GIRSU

may he (NIN-SHAGH) bow down his face !

No. 2 ON A BUTTRESS

the god NIN-GIRSU],
the] warrior
~of the god EL]LILLA,
~Uru-]Ka[g]ina,
the] king
"of SHIRPUR]LA-KI,

1 [Bau is probably the Baau of Phoenician mythology, whose name was
interpreted "the night," and who was supposed along with her husband
Kolpia, " the wind," to have produced the first generation of men. The
word has been compared with the Hebrew bohu, translated " void " in Gen.
i. z. Ed.]

2 [' The temple of the father." Ed. ]

3 Or Nin-dun.

70 RECORDS OF THE PAST

7. [the Antd\-Shurra,

8. [the house] of abundance of his country,

9. [has] constructed.

i o. His [palace] of Ti-[ra-ash]

ii. [he] has constructed.

Lines 1 2 and 1 3 are destroyed.

14. [For the god] GAL-ALIMMA

Lines 15-21 are destroyed.

22. [he has] constructed.

23. [For the god] NIN-SAR,

24. the bearer [of the sword ?]

25. [of the god] NIN-GIRSU,

26. his temple

27. he has constructed.

28. [For the god . . .] GIR (?)

29. the well-beloved

30. [of the god] NIN-GIRSU

31. his temple

32. he has constructed.

33. The ur(t)-sag,

34. his temple which rises to the entrance of heaven (?),

35. he has constructed.

36. For the god ELLILLA

37. the temple of E-ADDA, 1

38. his im-sag-ga,

39. he has constructed.

40. For the god NIN-GIRSU

41. the sanctuary (?)

42. of E-melam-kurra 2

43. he has constructed.

44. The temple wherein dwells (?) the god NIN-GIRSU

45. he has constructed.

46. Of Uru-Kagina,

1 ["The temple of the father." Ed.']
2 ["The temple of the brilliance of the (eastern) mountain." Ed.}

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF 7ELLOH

47. who the temple

48. of the god Nin-ciRSU ....

The inscription breaks off here, having never been finished.

NO. 3. ON A CYLINDER 1
COLUMN I

The first lines are lost.

1. Uru-Kagina,

2. the king

3. of GIRSU-KI,

4. the Anta-shurra,

5. the house of abundance of his country,

6. his palace of TI-RA-ASH,

7. has constructed.

8. The temple of the goddess BAU

9. [he has] constructed.

Lacuna.

COLUMN II

The first lines are lost.

1. he has [constructed].

2. For the god [DUN-SHA]GA[NA]

3. his habitation of [AKKIL]

4. he has [constructed].

5. For the god ....

6. his tablet-like amulets (?) 2

7. (and) his temple he has made.

8. In the middle (of this temple)

9. for the god ZA-ZA-URU,

10. for the god IM-GHUD-N,

11. for the god GIM-NUN-TA-N-A

1 Ddcouvertes, pi. 32.

2 Possibly the small tablets of white or black stone buried under the
foundations of the temples. These tablets were sometimes of metal ; those,
for example, discovered at Khorsabad. It seems that some consisted also
of ivory and precious wood ; see W. A. I., i. 49, col. 4, 12.

72 RECORDS OF THE PAST

12. temples he has built for them.

13. For the god NIN-SAR

Lacuna.

COLUMN III

The first lines are lost.

1. [For the god ELLIL]LA

2. [the temple of E-JADDA, his [im-]sagga,

3. he has constructed.

4. For the goddess NINA,

5. her favourite river,

6. the canal NINA-KI-TUM-A

7. he has excavated (?).

8. At the mouth (of the canal), an edifice.

Fragments of four other columns remain.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 73

IV. INSCRIPTION OF ENTENA ON A BUTTRESS

1. To the goddess GATUMDUG,

2. the mother of SHIRPURLA-KI,

3. Entena,

4. the pat'esi

5. of SHIRPURLA-KI,

6. who has built the temple of the goddess GATUMDUG.

7. His god

8. is the god DUN-SIR(?)-ANNA.

74 RECORDS OF THE PAST

V. INSCRIPTION OF EN-ANNA-TUMMA ON A BUTTRESS l

1. For the god NiN-Gmsu,

2. the warrior of the god ELLILLA,

3. En-anna-tumma,

4. the patesi

5. of SHIRPURLA-KI,

6. the chosen of the heart

7. of the goddess NINA,

8. the great patesi

9. of the god NIN-GIRSU,

10. the son of Entena

11. the patesi

12. of SHIRPURLA-KI.

1 3. For the god NIN-GIRSU

14. his house of fruits

15. he has restored.

1 6. Of En-anna-tumma,

17. who the house of fruits

1 8. of the god NIN-GIRSU

19. has restored,

20. his god

21. is the god DUN-SIR(?)-ANNA.

1 Ddcouvertes, pi. 6, No. 4.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 75

VI. INSCRIPTIONS OF UR-BAU AND HIS REIGN

NO. I. ON A STATUE 1
COLUMN I

1. To the god NIN-GIRSU

2. the powerful warrior

3. of the god ELLILLA,

4. Ur-Bau

5. the patesi

6. of SHIRPURLA-KI,

7. the offspring begotten

8. by the god NIN-AGAL,

9. chosen by the immutable will of the goddess NINA,

10. endowed with power by the god NIN-GIRSU,

11. named with a favourable name by the goddess BAU,

12. endowed with intelligence by the god EN-Ki, 2

COLUMN II

1. covered with renown by the goddess NINNI,

2. the favourite servant of the god who is king of GISH-

GALLA-KI,

3. the favourite of the goddess DUZI-ABZU.

4. I am UR-BAU ;

5. the god NIN-GIRSU is my king.

6. The site of ... . 3 he has excavated.

7. The earth thence extracted, like precious stones, he has

measured (?) ;

8. like a precious metal he has weighed (?) it.

1 Dlcouvertes, pll. 7 and 8. Translated by Dr. Oppert in a Communi-
cation to the Acaddmie des Inscriptions, 3151 March 1882.

2 [Also called Ea, the god of the deep. Ed.}

3 Perhaps some edifice previously dedicated to the goddess Bau. The
characters are destroyed.

76 RECORDS OF THE PAST

. COLUMN III

1. According to the plan adopted he has marked out a

large space ;

2. into the middle (of it) he has carried this earth,

3. and he has made its mundus. 1

4. Above, a substructure 6 cubits high, he has built.

5. Above this substructure

6. the temple E-NiNNU, which illumines the darkness (?),

30 cubits in height,

7. he has built.

8. For the goddess NiN-GHARSAG, 2 the mother of the

gods,

COLUMN IV

1. her temple of GIRSU-KI

2. he has constructed.

3. For the goddess BAU,

4. the good lady,

5. the daughter of ANNA,

6. her temple of URU-AZAGGA

7. he has constructed.

8. For the goddess NINNI, the lady august, the sove-

reign (?),

9. her temple of GISHGALLA-K.I

10. he has constructed.

1 1. For the god EN-KI, the king of ERIDU,

12. his temple of GIRSU-KI

COLUMN V

1. he has constructed.

2. For the god NIN-DARA, S the lord of destinies (?),

3. his temple he has constructed.

4. For the god NIN-AGAL,

1 This translation of these six lines is given under reserve. Should we
compare the ceremonies at the foundation of cities in classical antiquity?

2 ["The lady of the mountain." Ed.]
8 [OrUras. Ed.~\

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF TELLOH 77

5. his god,

6. his temple

7. he has constructed.

8. For the goddess NiN-MAR-Ki 1

9. the good lady,

10. the eldest daughter of the goddess NINA,

11. the Esh-gu-tur (?), the temple of her constant choice,

12. he has constructed.

COLUMN VI

1. For the god ....

2. the shepherd . . . [of] GIR-[SU-KI],

3. his temple . . .

4. he has constructed.

5. For the goddess Ku-ANNA, 2

6. the lady of the cloudy sky (?),

7. her temple of GIRSU-KI

8. he has constructed.

9. For the goddess DUZI-ABZU,

10. the lady of KINUNIR-KI,

1 1. her temple of GIRSU-KI

12. he has constructed.

The remaining inscriptions of Telloh will be translated
in the next volume.

1 [' ' The lady of the city of Mar. " Ed. ]

2 The consort of the god Martu [or Rimmon], according to a cylinder
belonging to M. de Clercq (No. 114) ; cf. W. A. I., iii. 67, b. 35.

SIN-GASHID'S ENDOWMENT OF THE
TEMPLE 6-ANA

TRANSLATED BY THEO. G. PINCHES

THIS short inscription of twenty-seven lines is one
of peculiar interest. It is a record, written in the
Akkadian language, of an endowment, made by an
early Mesopotamian king with a Semitic Babylonian
name, to the great temple at Erech called E-ana ; l
and it is not an original, but a copy in clay, written by
a man named Nabu-baladhsu-iqbi, of a stone tablet
kept, in ancient times, in the great temple known as
li-zida, now the ruin called the Birs-i-Nimroud the
supposed tower of Babel. Great care has been taken
by the copyist in inscribing the tablet; and the forms
of the characters, as he has given them, probably
reproduce fairly well the archaic style of the original.
The text itself covers the greater part of the two
sides of the clay tablet, which is, like most of the
documents of this kind found in Babylonia and
Assyria, flat or nearly so on the obverse, and
curved on the reverse. The last three lines, which

1 Written -an-na in the inscriptions. The end-syllable -na is, how-
ever, generally regarded as a kind of phonetic complement, and the n is
therefore not really double. The name means " House of heaven."

SIN-GAS fflS ENDOWMENT OF TEMPLE E-ANA 79

are separate from the others, are written smaller, and
are in the later Babylonian style of writing. Unlike
the rest, also, they are written in the Semitic-Baby-
lonian language. The size of the tablet is 4^- inches
by 2-| inches, the thickness in the thickest part being
i^- inch. The colour is a very light yellow ochre.

As the word-order in Akkadian differs consider-
ably from English, no attempt is made to preserve
the divisions of the lines of the original ; by this
arrangement translations from these ancient tongues
are much more easily understood.

TRANSLATION OF THE INSCRIPTION OF
SIN-GASHID

Sin-gashid, 1 king of ERECH, 2 king of AMNANUM, and
patron 3 of &-ANA, to LUGAL-BANDA his god and NIN-GUL
his goddess. When he built -ANA he erected &-KANKAL,
the house which is the seat of the joy of his heart. 4 Dur-
ing his dominion he will endow it with 5 30 gur of wheat,
1 2 mana of wool, i o mana of produce, 1 8 qa of oil accord-
ing to 6 the tariff, and i shekel of gold. May his years be
years of plenty.

COLOPHON IN SEMITIC-BABYLONIAN :

Copy of the tablet of ww-stone, the property 7 of &-ZIDA,
which Nabu-baladhsu-iqbi, son of Mitsiraa, 8 has written.

It may not be without interest to give here a
transcription of the original text into Roman char-

1 This name is probably for Sin-kashid, ' ' the Moon-god has made
captive."

2 The Akkadian form is Unuga.

3 Literally "nourisher" (ua, equivalent to the Semitic -Babylonian
zaninu).

' The Akkadians here use the compound sha-ghulla, " heartjoy."

8 Literally, "measure out to it."

Or, perhaps, "according to the tariff of the time."

7 The original has the Akkadian word nigga Semitic- Babylonian
mimmu.

8 Mitsiraa, "the Egyptian."

SIN-GASHID'S ENDOWMENT OF TEMPLE E-ANA 81

acters, omitting the determinative prefixes, which
were probably not pronounced :

Lugal-banda, dingiranir, Nin-gul amanir, Sin-
gashid, lugal Unuga, lugal Amnanum, ua -ana.
Ud E-ana mu-dua, -kankal, e ki-tur shaghulakane,
munen-du. Bala nam-lugalakani ba she-gur-ta, ghu-
min mana sig-ta, ghu mana um-ta (ghu-ussa-qa *) sal-
gish-ta, kilama dana-ka, guskin gi ge ghipdazig.
Mua-ni mu ghigala ghia.

Gabri narua sha ushi, nigga E-zida, Nabu-bal-
adhsu-iqbt, abil Mitsiraa, isdhur.

The text begins with an invocation to Lugal-
banda and his consort Nin-gul, who seem to have
been Sin-gashid's patron god and goddess. He then
speaks of -ana, one of the great temples of Erech
(which was, perhaps, Sin-gashid's capital), and E-kan-
kal, probably one of the shrines in E-ana. Judging
from the wording, Sin-gashid seems to claim to be
the founder of both those fanes, though it is probable
that he only rebuilt them. Sin-gashid then gives a
list of the amounts of produce, etc., with which he
had endowed the shrine, and ends with a pious wish
for his country. The date of the original of this in-
scription may be set down at about 2600 B.C. The
copy which has come down to us, however, probably
dates from the time of the antiquarian revival in
Babylonia during the reign of Nabonidus, father of
Belshazzar.

1 This is represented on the tablet by a single character formed with
four wedges (three horizontal and one upright) of the same form as the
character as. This character is equivalent to 3x6 ( = 18) qa.

VOL. I G

82 RECORDS OF THE PAST

It is to be noted that the inscription is dedicated
to a god and a goddess whose names I provisionally
transcribe as Lngal-banda ("powerful king," or "king
of youthful strength ") and Nin-gul, his consort (as
we learn from the second volume of the Cuneiform
Inscriptions of Western Asia, pi. 59, 11. 24 and 25 1 ).
This identification of Ningul as the consort of Lugal-
banda is important, as it shows that Sin-gashid, who
calls her his mother, and himself her son, 2 did not
mean to imply that she was his real earthly parent,
but that he simply traced his descent from her, thus
asserting his divine origin. The late George Smith's
double-queried " Belat-sunat " (as he transcribed the
name Nin-gul), " the earliest known queen in the
Euphrates valley," must therefore be erased from the
list of historical rulers in Erech.

The temple E-ana was probably the principal
fane in the city of Erech, and -kankal 3 was prob-
ably one of the shrines within it. It is not improb-
able that the -kankal mentioned here is the same
as, or the fellow-shrine to, the 6-ghili-ana mentioned
by Assur-bani-pal as the sanctuary, apparently in or
connected with 6-ana, to which he restored the
image of the goddess Nana, which was carried off
by the king of Elam, Kudur-nankhundi, about 2280

1 From a comparison of the other names in the text there published, it
would seem that other possible readings of these two names are Uvutn-
banda or On-banda and &n-gul or -gul. Fresh excavations in the East
can alone determine these points.

2 Cun. Ins. of W. Asia, vol. i. pi. 3, No. viii. (Brick from the sum-
mit of the Bovvarieh ruin at Warka).

3 ' ' The house of the sanctuary " (?).

SIN-GASHID'S ENDOWMENT OF TEMPLE E-ANA 83

rears before Christ. As the date of Sin-gashid is

loubtful, 1 it is impossible to say with certainty

whether the capture of the image of Nana by the

Elamites took place before or after his reign, but

it was probably after. 2

The inscription here translated and explained is
a duplicate of one published in the fourth volume of
the Ctmeiform Ins. of W. Asia, pi. 35, No. 3, from
two cones from Warka. 3 Of this text, which is
rather roughly written, and which gives a few inter-
esting variants from the text translated above, a
tentative translation was given by the late George
Smith in his " Early History of Babylonia," pub-
lished in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical
Archeology ', vol. i., and in the first series of the
Records of the Past, vol. iii.

1 He may be regarded as having reigned about 2600 B.C.

2 The text of Assur-bani-pal's description is as follows : "For 1635
years had the goddess Nana been angry, had gone, and had dwelt within
Elam, which was not her proper place ; and in those days she and the
gods her fathers proclaimed my name to the dominion of the world. She
intrusted to me the return of her divinity thus : ' Assur-bani-pal shall bring
me out of the midst of wicked Elam, and shall cause me to enter within
E-ana.' The words of the command of her divinity, which she had
spoken from remote days, she again revealed to the later people. I
grasped the hand of her great divinity, and she took the straight road,
with joy of heart, to E-ana. In the month Kisleu, on the first day, I
caused her to enter Erech, and in E-ghili-ana, which she loves, I caused
an everlasting shrine to be founded for her."

3 The ancient Erech, in which the temple E-ana was situated.

AN ERECHITE'S LAMENT
TRANSLATED BY THEO. G. PINCHES

IN connection with the text referring to E-ana in
Erech, the following, a kind of penitential psalm
written in the Sumerian dialect, with a translation
into Semitic-Babylonian, which I have entitled " The
Erechite's lament over the desolation of his father-
land," may be here very appropriately appended.
This interesting composition, if not actually written
and sung after the carrying away of the statue of the
goddess Nana by the Elamities, might well have
been chanted by the sorrowing Erechites on that
occasion.

The fragment as published (Cun. Ins. of W. Asia,
iv. 19, No. 3) begins with the reverse of the text, and
breaks off when rather less than half-way through it.
Of the obverse, which is as yet unpublished, the re-
mains only of about sixteen lines at the bottom are
left. What remains of the obverse refers to the
devastation wrought by an enemy in the city of
Erech, and the subject is continued on the reverse,
which ends in a kind of litany. The following is a
free rendering of the inscription on the reverse.

TRANSLATION OF THE LAMENT

Pw long, my Lady, shall the strong enemy hold thy sanc-
tuary ?

There is want in ERECH, thy principal city ;
Blood is flowing like water in E-ulbar, the house of thy

oracle ;
He has kindled and poured out fire like hailstones on all

thy lands.

My Lady, sorely am I fettered by misfortune ;
My Lady, thou hast surrounded me, and brought me to

grief.

The mighty enemy has smitten me down like a single reed.
Not wise myself, I cannot take counsel ; 1
I mourn day and night like the fields. 2
I, thy servant, pray to thee.
Let thy heart take rest, let thy disposition be softened.

weeping, let thy heart take rest.

let thy heart take rest.

save (?) thou.

Translations of this text have been given by G.
Smith, Lenormant, Halevy, Hommel, and Zimmern,
and a drawing of the reverse of the fragment, accom-
panied with a transcription and translation, was given
by me in the Babylonian and Oriental Record for
December 1886.

1 Literally, *' I do not take counsel, myself I am not wise (Sumerian :
Dimmu nu-mundib, ni-mu nu-mushtugmen ; Assyrian : Dheme ul tsabtaku,
ramani -ill khasaku}.

Better, perhaps, " Like the marshland, day and night I groan."

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I

KING OF ASSYRIA
TRANSLATED BY THE EDITOR

THIS inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I. is the longest
and most important of the early Assyrian records
that have come down to us. The genealogical
details given in it are of great value for determining
the chronology and succession of the earlier monarchs
of Assyria, while the description of the campaigns of
the king throws a brilliant and unexpected light on
the ancient geography of Western Asia. To the
geographer, indeed, the care with which Tiglath-
Pileser enumerates the countries he overran and the
cities he sacked is of inestimable importance. A
new chapter has been added to the history of ancient
geography, and we now possess a fairly complete
map of the districts north and north-west of Assyria
before the overthrow of the Hittite power had brought
with it revolution and change. We find geographical
names of similar form stretching westwards from the
neighbourhood of Lake Van to the confines of Asia
Minor, together with evidence that tribes like those

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 87

of the Moskhi and Tibareni, whose scanty relics
in later days found a refuge on the shores of the
Black Sea, once inhabited extensive tracts on the
slopes of the Taurus Mountains. A new world has,
in fact, been opened up to the geographer.

Equally new is the world that has been opened
up to the historian. The date of Tiglath-Pileser I
can be approximately fixed by the help of an inscrip-
tion of Sennacherib. On the rock of Bavian (W. A. I.
iii. 14, 48-50) Sennacherib refers to " Rimmon and
Sala, the gods of the City of Palaces (Ekallati\
which Merodach-nadin-akhi, King of Accad, had
taken and carried away to Babylon in the time of
Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria"; and he goes on
to say that he himself had " brought them out of
Babylon 4 1 8 years afterwards." As the restora-
tion of the images took place after Sennacherib's
destruction of Babylon in B.C. 688, the date of their
capture by Merodach-nadin-akhi would be B.C. 1 1 06.
The conquests and campaigns described in Tiglath-
Pileser's inscription must therefore be placed before
this year.

The expeditions of Tiglath-Pileser, however, bore
but little fruit. They were not much more than
raids, whose effects passed away after the death of
the king who conducted them. In a fragmentary
inscription of his son and successor, Assur-bil-kala,
mention is made of " the land of the west," or
Phcenicia, but it is doubtful whether any further
campaigns weie carried on in this direction. Assyria

RECORDS OF THE PAST

fell into a state of decay ; its frontier cities passed
into other hands, and for nearly two hundred years
it is hidden altogether from sight. It was not until
the ninth century before our era that under the war-
like Assur-natsir-pal and his son Shalmaneser II it
once more became a name of terror to Western Asia.
Tip;lath-Pileser I remained the central figure of the

o o

older empire, towering above his fellows on the
Assyrian throne. When the ancient line of princes
became extinct, and the crown was seized by the
usurper Pul, the new king knew of no better way in
which to legitimise his claim to sovereignty than by
assuming the time-honoured name of Tukulti-pal-
Esar or Tiglath-Pileser, " the servant of (Uras) the
divine son of Esarra."

Though Tiglath-Pileser was not brought into
direct relations with Palestine, it is probable that his
wars, followed as they were by the temporary decay
of Assyria, had much to do with the rise of the em-
pire of David. The wars of Tiglath-Pileser weakened
the power of the Hittites in the north, and allowed
the small states of Syria to make head against them.
For more than a century the latter had no powerful
neighbours to fear or court. Egypt had passed
under eclipse, and was divided between rival dynasties
of kings, while Assyria had equally ceased to be
formidable. When David and Joab built up the
empire of Israel, there was no strong enemy to
oppose and attack them. Hadadezer of Zobah
might go " to recover his border at the river "

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 89

Euphrates; there was no Hittite or Assyrian monarch
to stand in his way.

The inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I is inscribed
on four large octagonal cylinders of clay, origin-
ally buried under the foundations of the four corners
of the great temple of Kileh Sherghat, the ancient
city of Assur, and now in the British Museum ; and
it has been published in the Cuneiform Inscriptions of
Western Asia, i. pi. ix.-xvi. In 1857 the inscription
was selected for testing the substantial correctness of
the method employed by the Assyriologists, and of
the results obtained by them. On the proposal of
the Royal Asiatic Society, four translations of it,
more or less complete, were made independently by
Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Fox Talbot, Dr. Hincks,
and Dr. Oppert, and submitted under seal to the
secretary of the Society. When opened and com-
pared, it was found that they exhibited a remarkable
resemblance to one another as regards both the
transliteration of proper names and the rendering of
individual passages. The resemblance, in fact, was
greater than could be accounted for, except on the
assumption that the method employed by the
decipherers was a sound one, and that they were
working on a solid basis. Since 1857 immense
advances have been made in our knowledge of
Assyrian. Characters whose values were then un-
known, and words whose meaning was obscure,
are now familiar to the student ; and a historical
inscription like that of Tiglath-Pileser presents

90 RECORDS OF THE PAST

but few difficulties to the Assyriologist of to-
day.

In 1880 the inscription was re-edited and trans-
lated with notes and glossary by Dr. W. Lotz under
the auspices of his teacher, Prof. Fr. Delitzsch. The
translation embodied all the stores of increased
knowledge which the incessant labour of twenty-three
years had accumulated, and it is only in a compara-
tively few passages that it can be improved. The
English reader may now consider that he has before
him the actual words of the old Assyrian king, and can
use them for historical and geographical purposes
without fear or reservation. The foot-notes will be
found to contain all the geographical information at
present attainable relative to the localities mentioned
in the text.

A word or two must be added on the name of
the divinity to whom Tiglath-Pileser was dedicated
by his parents. This deity represented the Sun-god
primitively worshipped at Nipur (now Niffer) in
Babylonia, who afterwards came to be regarded as a
sort of Chaldean Herakles. He is the only deity
of the first rank whose name is still a matter of
dispute. It is generally given as Adar in default of
anything better, but the reading is certainly false.
According to the monuments he was called Uras in
Accadian, and also in Semitic, when regarded as
" the god of light." But he was further known in
Assyrian as Baru " the revealer," though we learn
from a Babylonian text recently discovered in Upper

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 91

Egypt that his more usual title was Masu, "the
hero," a word which is, letter for letter, the same
as the Hebrew Mosheh, " Moses." Masu is defined
as being " the Sun-god who rises from the divine day."
As such he was identified with one of the primaeval
gods of Accadian cosmology, and so became " the
son of fi-sarra," or " the house of the firmament."
See my Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Baby-
lonians, pp. 151-153.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I

THE BEGINNING !
COLUMN I

T. ASUR the great lord, the director of the hosts of the
gods,

2. the giver of the sceptre and the crown, the establisher

of the kingdom ;

3. BEL, the lord (#/), the king of all the spirits of the

earth,

4. the father of the gods, the lord of the world ;

5. SIN (the Moon-god), the sentient one, the lord of the

crown,

6. the exalted one, the god of the storm - } l

7. SAMAS (the Sun-god), the judge of heaven and earth,

who beholds

8. the plots of the enemy, who feeds the flock ;

9. RIMMON (the Air-god), the prince, the immdator of

hostile shores,

10. of countries (and) houses; 2
IT. URAS, the hero, the destroyer of evil men and foes,

12. who discloses all that is in the heart;

13. ISTAR, the eldest of the gods, the lady of girdles,

1 4. the strengthener of battles.

15. Ye great gods, guiders of heaven (and) earth,

1 6. whose onset (is) opposition and combat,

17. who have magnified the kingdom

1 8. of Tiglath-Pileser, the prince, the chosen

1 Identified with Ea in W. A. I., ii. 60, 21. 2 Or "hollows."

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 93

1 9. of the desire of your hearts, the exalted shepherd,

20. whom you have conjured in the steadfastness of your

hearts,

21. with a crown supreme you have clothed him ; to rule

22. over the land of BEL mightily you have established

him ;

23. priority of birth, supremacy (and) heroism

24. have you given him ; the destiny of his lordship

25. for his increase and supremacy,

26. to inhabit Bit-kharsag-kurkurra 1

27. for ever have you summoned.

28. Tiglath-Pileser, the powerful king,

29. the king of hosts who has no rival, the king of the

four zones,

30. the king of all kinglets, the lord of lords, the shepherd-

prince, the king of kings,

31. the exalted prophet, 2 to whom by the proclamation of

SAMAS

32. the illustrious sceptre has been given as a gift, so that

the men

33. who are subject to BEL he has ruled

34. in (their) entirety ; the faithful shepherd,

35. proclaimed (lord) over kinglets,

36. the supreme governor whose weapons ASUR

37. has predestined, and for the government of the four

zones

38. has proclaimed his name for ever ; the capturer

39. of the distant divisions 3 of the frontiers

1 " The Temple of the Mountain of the World," the name of an old
temple in the city of Assur, which had been restored by Shalmaneser I
(B.C. 1300). In early Babylonian mythology "the Mountain of the
World " was the Olympos on which the gods dwelt, and which was iden-
tified with Mount Rowandiz. It is referred to in Isaiah xiv. 13, where the
Babylonian king is made to say : "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt
my throne above the stars of Elohim : I will sit also on the mount of the
assembly (of the gods) in the extremities of the north. I will ascend above
the heights of the clouds ; I will be like the most High."

2 Isippu, related to asipu, "a diviner," which was borrowed by the
Book of Daniel under the form ashshaph, and may have the same origin as
the name of Joseph.

3 Pulugi, the Hebrew Peleg, in whose days the earth was " divided."

94 RECORDS OF THE PAST

40. above and below ; the illustrious prince

41. whose glory has overwhelmed (all) regions;

42. the mighty destroyer, 1 who like the rush

43. of a flood is made strong against the hostile land ;

44. by the proclamation of BEL he has no rival ;

45. he has destroyed the foeman of ASUR.

46. May ASUR (and) the great gods who have magnified

my kingdom,

47. who have given increase and strength to my fetters,

48. (who) have ordered the boundary of their land

49. to be enlarged, cause my hand to hold

50. their mighty weapons, even the deluge of battle.

51. Countries, mountains,

52. fortresses and kinglets, the enemies of ASSUR,

53. I have conquered, and their territories

54. I have made submit. With sixty kings,

55. I have contended furiously, 2 and
5 6. power (and) rivalry over them

57. I displayed. A rival in the combat,

58. a confronter in the battle have I not.

59. To the land of ASSYRIA I have added land, to its men

60. (I have added) men ; the boundary of my own land

6 1. I have enlarged, and all their lands I have conquered.

62. At the beginning of my reign twenty thousand men

63. of the MusKAYA 3 and their five kings,

64. who for fifty years from the lands of Ai,zi 4

1 Naplu, probably the same word as the Nephilim or "giants " of Gen.
vi. 4 and Numb. xiii. 33. Sennacherib, in describing the construction of
his palace, says : "A railing of three bronze cords and the divine Napallu
I erected above it," where "the divine Napallu" probably refers to the
image of a protecting deity.

2 Literally, " in drunken fashion " (sutkuris],

3 The Meshech of the Old Testament, the Moschi of the classical
writers, who in Assyrian times occupied the country to the north of Mala-
tiyeh. In the later Assyrian inscriptions they are associated with the
Tubal or Tibareni, as in the Old Testament.

4 Alzi lay on the southern bank of the Euphrates, between Palu and
Khini, and included Enzite, the Anzite'ne' of classical geography (at the

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 95

65. and Purukuzzi had taken the tribute

66. and gifts owing to ASUR my lord,

67. no king at all in battle

68. had subdued their opposition to their strength

69. trusted and came down; the land of KuMMUKH 1

70. they seized. Trusting in ASUR my lord

71. I assembled my chariots and armies.

72. Thereupon I delayed not. 2 The mountain of KASI-

YARA, 3

73. a difficult region, I crossed,

74. with their twenty thousand fighting men

75. and their five kings in the land of KUMMUKH

76. I contended. A destruction of them

77. I made. The bodies of their warriors

78. in destructive battle like the inundator (RIMMON)

79. I overthrew; their corpses I spread

80. over the valleys and the high places of the mountains.

8 1. Their heads I cut off; at the sides

82. of their cities I heaped (them) like mounds.

83. Their spoil, their property, their goods,

84. to a countless number I brought forth. Six thousand

(men),

85. the relics of their armies, which before

86. my weapons had fled, took

87. my feet. I laid hold upon them and

88. counted them among the men of my own country.

89. In those days, against KUMMUKH, the disobedient,

90. which had withheld the tribute and gifts for ASUR my

lord,

91. I marched. The land of KUMMUKH

92. I conquered throughout its circuit.

sources of the Sebbeneh Su). Alzi was invaded by the Vannic king
Menuas, who says that it formed part of the territory of the Khate or
Hittites.

1 Kummukh, the classical Komagene, extended in the Assyrian age on
either side of the Euphrates, from Malatiyeh in the north to Birejik in the
south, Merash probably being one of its cities.

2 Literally, " I awaited not the future."

3 Mons Masius, the modern Tur Abdin.

96 RECORDS OF THE PAST

93. Their spoil, their property, their goods

94. I brought forth ; their cities with fire

COLUMN II

1. I burned, I threw down, I dug up. The rest

2. of (the men of) KUMMUKH, who before my weapons

3. had fled, to the city of SERESSE l

4. on the further bank of the TIGRIS

5. passed over; the city for their stronghold

6. they made. My chariots and warriors

7. I took. The difficult mountains and their inaccess-

ible

8. paths with picks of bronze

9. I split. A pontoon for the passage

10. of my chariots and army I contrived.

11. The TIGRIS I crossed. The city of SERISE,

12. their strong city, I captured.

13. Their fighting men, in the midst of the mountains,

14. I flung to the ground like sling-stones (?). 2

15. Their corpses over the TIGRIS and the high places of

the mountains

1 6. I spread. In those days the armies

17. of the land of QURKHE, S which for the preserva-

tion

1 8. and help of the land of KUMMUKH

19. had come, along with the armies

20. of KUMMUKH, like a moon-stone I laid low.

21. The corpses of their fighting men into heaps

22. in the ravines of the mountains I heaped up;

23. the bodies of their soldiers the river NAME

1 This must have been in the neighbourhood of Amid or Diarbekir. The
Vannic king Menuas mentions a Hittite city, Surisidas, in the vicinity of
Alzi. Delitzsch compares the Sareisa of Strabo.

2 Sutmasi. In R. 204. i. 22 sa sammasi is interpreted "a slinger,"
and in W. A. I., iv. 13, 5, samsd is "a sling-stone."

3 The land of Qurkhi extended eastward of Diarbekir, along the
northern bank of the Tigris. The name is preserved in that of Kurkh,
20 miles S. E. of Diarbekir, where there are ruins, and where a stelS of Shal-
maneser II has been discovered.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 97

24. carried away into the TIGRIS.

25. Kili-anteru the son of Kali-anteru,

26. (the descendant) of Saru-pin-'siusuni, 1

27. their king in the midst of battle my hand

28. captured; his wives (and) children

29. the offspring of his heart, his troops, 180

30. bronze plates, 5 bowls of copper,

31. along with their gods, gold (and) silver,

32. the choicest of their property, I removed.

33. Their spoil (and) their goods I carried away.

34. The city itself and its palace with fire

35. I burned, I pulled down, (and) dug up.

36. As for the city of URRAKHINAS, their stronghold,

37. which was situated on the mountain of PANARI,

38. fear that avoided the glory of ASSUR my lord

39. overwhelmed them. To save

40. their lives they removed their gods ;

41. to the ravines of the lofty mountains

42. they fled like a bird. My chariots

43. and armies I took ; I crossed the TIGRIS.

44. Sadi-anteru, the son of Khattukhi, 2 the king

45. of URRAKHINAS, that he might not be conquered,

46. in that country took my feet.

47. The children, the offspring of his heart, and his family

48. I took as hostages.

49. Sixty bronze plates, a bowl of copper,

50. and a tray of heavy copper,

51. along with 120 men, oxen,

52. (and) sheep, as tribute and offering

1 Sarpina was the name of one of the Hittite cities, whose god was in-
voked in the treaty between Ramses II and the Hittite king. With the
termination we may compare that of Abar-'siuni in iv. 82.

2 The first part of the name Sadi-anteru, which reminds us of the
Lydian Sady-att6s, may contain the name of the god Sanda or Sandon.
A Hittite prince mentioned by the Vannic king Menuas was called Sada-
hadas. Khattu-khi means "the Hittite," the suffix -khi, as in Vannic,
denoting a patronymic or gentilic adjective. Urra - khi - nas is similarly
derived from Urra, the termination -khi-nas, in Vannic, denoting ' ' the place
of the people of."

VOL. I H

98 RECORDS OF THE PAST

53. (which) he brought, I received. I had compassion on

him ;

54. I granted his life. The heavy yoke

55. of my lordship I laid upon him for future days.

56. The broad land of KUMMUKH throughout its circuit

57. I conquered; under my feet I subdued.

58. In those days a tray of copper (and) a bowl

59. of copper, from the spoil and tribute

60. of KUMMUKH I dedicated to ASUR my lord.

6 1. The sixty bronze plates along with their gods

62. I presented to RIMMON who loves me.

63. Through the violence of my powerful weapons, which

ASSUR the lord

64. gave for strength and heroism,

65. in thirty of my chariots that go at my side

66. my fleet steeds 1 (and) my soldiers,

67. who are strong 2 in destructive fight,

68. I took ; against the country of MILDIS, the powerful,

69. the disobedient, I marched. Mighty mountains,

70. an inaccessible district,

71. (where it was) good in my chariots (where it was) bad

on my feet,

72. I crossed. At the mountain of ARUMA,

73. a difficult district, which for the passage of my chariots

74. was not suited, I left the chariots,

75. I took the lead of my soldiers.

76. Like a lion (?) the obstacles (?) in the ravines of the

inaccessible mountains

77. victoriously I crossed.

78. The land of MILDIS like the flood 3 of the deluge I

overwhelmed.

79. Their fighting men in the midst of battle

80. like a moon-stone I laid low. Their spoil

8 1. their goods (and) their property I carried away.

1 Literally " complete horses. " 2 Lit.

3 Literally "mound" or ''tel."

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 99

82. All their cities I burned with fire.

83. Hostages, tribute and offering

84. I imposed upon them.

85. Tiglath-pileser, the hero, the warrior,

86. who opens the path of the mountains,

87. who subdues the disobedient, who sweeps away

88. all the overweening.

89. The land of SuBARi, 1 the powerful, the disobedient,

90. I subdued. As for the countries of ALZI

91. and PURUKUZZI, which had withheld

92. their tribute and their offering,

93. the heavy yoke of my lordship upon them

94. I laid, (saying), each year tribute and offering

95. to my city of ASUR, to my presence,

96. let them bring. In accordance with my valour,

97. since ASUR the lord has caused my hand to hold

98. the mighty weapon which subdues the disobedient,

and

99. to enlarge the frontier of his country

100. has commanded (me), 4000 men of the KASKA 2

1 01. and of the URUMA, 3 soldiers of the HITTITES

(KHATTI),

102. disobedient ones, who in their strength

1 Subari, called Subarti a few lines farther on, had been overrun by
Rimmon-nirari I. (B.C. 1330), and was afterwards conquered by Assur-
natsir-pal, who describes it as situated between Qurkhi and Nirib, or the
plain of Diarbekir. As Qurkhi lay "opposite the land of the Hittites,"
Subari would have adjoined the territory of the latter people, in the im-
mediate vicinity of Alzi and Purukuzzi.

2 This seems to be the same word as the Kolkhians of classical geo-
graphy, though the seat of the Kolkhians was far to the north of that of
the Kaska. In the classical period, however, we find that the Moschi
and Tibareni (Meshech and Tubal) had also shifted far to the north of
their habitat in Assyrian times, and like the Kolkhians had settled on
the shores of the Black Sea. A town of Kolkhis, now represented by the
name of Lake Goldshik, lay to the S. W. of Palu.

3 Uruma may be the Urima of classical geography, the modern Urum.
It is called Urume- of Bitanu by Assur-natsir-pal, Bitanu being the district
south of Lake Van.

TOO RECORDS OF THE PAST

COLUMN III

1. had seized the cities of SUBARTI which looked to

2. the face 1 of ASUR my lord,

3. heard of my march against the land of SUBARTI ;

4. the glory of my valour overwhelmed them ;

5. they avoided battle ; my feet

6. they took.

7. Together with their property and 120

8. chariots (and the horses) harnessed to their yokes

9. I took them ; as the men

i o. of my own country I counted them.

TI. In the fierceness of my valour for the second time

12. to the country of KUMMUKH I marched. All

13. their cities I captured. Their spoil

14. their goods and their property I carried away.

15. Their cities with fire I burned,

1 6. I threw down (and) dug up, and the relics

17. of their armies, who before my powerful weapons

1 8. were terror-stricken and the onset of my mighty battle

19. avoided, to save

20. their lives sought the mighty summits

21. of the mountains, an inaccessible region.
2 2. To the fastnesses of the lofty ranges

23. and the ravines of the inaccessible mountains

24. which were unsuited for the tread of men

25. I ascended after them. Trial of weapons, combat

26. and battle they essayed with me.

27. A destruction of them I made. The bodies

28. of their warriors in the ravines of the mountains

29. like the inundator (RIMMON) I overthrew. Their

corpses

30. over the valleys and high places of the mountains

31. I spread. Their spoil, their goods

32. and their property from the mighty

1 That is, were subject to.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER 1 101

33. summits of the mountains I brought down.

34. The land of KUMMUKH to its whole extent I sub-

jugated, and

35. added to the territory of my country.

36. Tiglath-pileser the powerful king,

37. the mighty overwhelmer of the disobedient, he who

sweeps away

38. the opposition of the wicked.

39. In the supreme power of ASUR my lord

40. against the land of KnARiA 1 and the widespread

armies

41. of the land of QURKHI, lofty mountain-ranges

42. whose site no king at all

43. had sought out ASUR the lord commanded (me)

44. to march. My chariots and armies

45. I assembled. The neighbourhood 2 of the mountains

of IDNI

46. and AYA, an inaccessible district, I reached,

47. lofty mountains, which like the point of a sword

48. were formed, which for the passage of my chariots

49. were unsuited. The chariots in idleness

50. I left there. The precipitous mountains

51. I crossed. All the land of QURKHI

52. had collected its widespread armies, and

53. to make trial of arms, combat and battle

54. in the mountain of AZUTABGIS S was stationed, and

55. in the mountain, an inaccessible spot, with them

56. I fought, a destruction of them I made.

1 It is clear that Kharia was a district of Qurkhi which lay eastward of
Diarbekir and the Supnat or Sebeneh Su, in the direction of Bitlis. It is
perhaps the Arua of Assur-natsir-pal which adjoined the western frontier of
Ararat, a kingdom at that time confined to Lake Van and the district
south of the Lake. The name reminds us of the classical Korra, now
Karia, a little to the south-east of Kolkhis (on Lake Goldshik), and to the
north-west of Diarbekir.

2 Birti, from baru "to see."

3 Perhaps to be read Azues.

102 RECORDS OF THE PAST

57. The bodies of their warriors on the high places of the

mountains

58. into heaps I heaped.

59. The corpses of their warriors over the valleys and high

places

60. of the mountains I spread. Against the cities

6 1. which were situated in the ravines of the mountains

fiercely

62. I pierced (my way). 1 Twenty-five cities of the land

of KHARIA

63. which lie at the foot of the mountains of AYA, SUIRA,

IDNI,

64. Sizu, SELGU, ARZANIBIU, URU'SU, and ANITKU,

65. I captured. Their spoil,

66. their goods and their property I carried off.

67. Their cities with fire I burned,

68. I threw down (and) dug up.

69. The country of ADAUS feared the onset of my mighty

battle,

70. and their dwelling-place (the inhabitants) abandoned.

71. To the ravines of the lofty mountains

72. like birds they fled. The glory of ASSUR my lord

73. overwhelmed them, and

74. they descended and took my feet.

75. Tribute and offering I imposed upon them.

76. The lands of 'SARAUS and AMMAUS

77. which from days immemorial had not known

78. subjection, like the flood of the deluge

79. I overwhelmed. With their armies

80. on the mountain of ARUMA 2 I fought, and

8 1. a destruction of them I made. The bodies

82. of their fighting-men like sling-stones (?)

1 Aznig, not a snig.

2 As, according to ii. 78, Aruma lay on the frontier of Mildis, Adaus,
'Saraus, and Ammaus must have been Kurdish districts to the eastward
of Kummukh. The country of Adaus is mentioned by Assur-natsir-pal
in connection with Kirruri, which lay between Nimme and Qurkhi.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 103

83. I flung to the ground. Their cities I captured.

84. Their gods I removed. Their spoil,

85. their goods (and) their property I carried away.

86. Their cities with fire I burned,

87. I threw down (and) dug up; to mounds and ruins

88. I reduced. The heavy yoke of my lordship

89. I laid upon them. The face of ASSUR my lord

90. I made them behold. 1

91. The powerful countries of I'suA 2 and DARIA

92. which were disobedient I conquered. Tribute

93. and offering I imposed upon them.

94. The face of ASSUR my lord I caused them to behold.

95. In my supremacy when my enemies

96. I had conquered, my chariots and armies

97. I took. The lower Zab 3

98. I crossed. The countries of MURATTAS and SARADAUS

99. which are in the midst of the mountains of A'SANIU

and ADHUMA

100. an inaccessible region, I conquered.

101. Their armies like lambs

102. I cut down. The city of MURATTAS,

103. their stronghold, in the third part of a day

104. from sunrise I captured.

105. Their gods, their goods, (and) their property,

1 06. 60 plates of bronze,

COLUMN iv

i. 30 talents of bronze in fragments, 4 (and) the smaller
furniture

1 That is, "I reduced them to subjection to Assur."

2 I'sua, according to Shalmaneser II, adjoined Enzite or Anzitene" (on
the Sebbeneh Su) and lay on the southern bank of the Arsanias between
Palu and Mush. It is probably the U'su of Assur-natsir-pal, on the
western frontier of Arua (see note on iii. 40).

3 The lower Zab falls into the Tigris a little below Kalah Sherghat
(Assur). It rises in the Kurdish mountains, flowing past Arbela, and was
called Kapros by the classical geographers in contradistinction to the
Lykos or Upper Zab.

4 This seems to be the meaning of sabartum in K 1999, i. 15.

104 RECORDS OF THE PAST

2. of their palace, their spoil

3. I carried away. The city itself with fire

4. I burned, I threw down (and) dug up.

5. In those days that bronze

6. I dedicated to RIMMON the great lord who loves me.

7. In the mightiness of the power of ASUR my lord

8. against the lands of 'Suci and QURKHI, which had not

submitted

9. to ASUR my lord, I marched. With 6000

10. of their troops from the lands of KHIME, LUKHI,

11. ARIRGI, ALAMUN,

12. NIMNI and all the land of QURKHI

13. far-extending, on the mountain of KHIRIKHI,

14. an inaccessible district, which like the point of a sword

15. was formed, with all those countries

1 6. on my feet I fought.

17. A destruction of them I made.

1 8. Their fighting-men in the ravines of the mountains

19. into heaps I heaped.

20. With the blood of their warriors the mountain of

KHIRIKHI

2 1. like wool (?) I dyed.

22. The land of 'Suci throughout its circuit I conquered

23. Their 25 gods, their spoil,

24. their goods (and) their property I carried away.

25. All their cities with fire

26. I burnt, I threw down (and) dug up.

27. Those who were left of their armies took my feet ;

28. I showed favour towards them.

29. Tribute and offering upon them

30. I imposed; along with those who behold the face

31. of ASUR my lord I counted them.

32. In those days the 25 gods of those lands,

33. the acquisitions of my hands,

34. which I had taken, to gratify (?) the temple of BELTIS

35. the great wife, the favourite of ASUR my lord,

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 105

36. ANU, RIMMON (and) ISTAR of ASSUR,

37. as well as the palaces of my city ASSUR

38. and the goddesses of my country

39. I gave.

40. Tiglath-pileser the powerful king,

4 1 . the conqueror of hostile regions, the rival

42. of the company of all kings.

43. In those days through the supreme power

44. of ASUR my lord, through the everlasting grace

45. of SAMAS the warrior, through the ministry

46. of the great gods, who in the four zones

47. rule in righteousness, and have no vanquisher

48. in the combat, no rival in the battle,

49. to the lands of distant kings

50. on the shore of the upper sea, 1

51. who knew not subjection,

52. ASUR the lord urged me and I went.

53. Difficult paths and trackless passes

54. whose interior in former days

55. no king at all had known,

56. steep roads, ways

57. unopened, I traversed.

58. The mountains of ELAMA, AMADANA, 2 ELKHIS,

59. SIRABELI, TARKHUNA,

60. TlRKA-KHULI, KlZRA,

6 I. TARKHA-NABE, 3 ElAJLA,

62. KHASTARAE, SAKHISARA,

63. UBERA, MILI-ADRUNI,

64. SULIANZI, NUBANASI,

65. and SESI, 16 mighty mountains,

1 That is, Lake Van.

2 Amadana was the district about Amida or Diarbekir. Assur-natsir-pal
reached Amadana after leaving Adana, a district of Qurkhi.

3 Compare the names of the Gamgumian and Melitenian princes Tarkhu-
lara and Tarkhu-nazi, and of the Hittite city Tarkhi-gamas mentioned
by the Vannic king Menuas.

106 RECORDS OF THE PAST

66. where the ground was good in my chariots, where it

was difficult

67. with picks of bronze, I penetrated.

68. I cut down the urum-trees which grow in the mountains.

69. Bridges for the passage

70. of my troops I constructed well.

71. I crossed the EUPHRATES. The king of the land of

NlMME, 1

72. the king of TuNUBU, 2 the king of TUALI,

73. the king of QIDARI, the king of UZULA,

74. the king of UNZAMUNI, the king of ANDIABE,

75. the king of PILAQINI, the king of ADHURGINI,

76. the king of KuLi-BARZiNi, 3 the king of SINIBIRNI,

77. the king of KHIMUA, the king of PAITERI,*

78. the king of UIRAM, the king of SURURIA,

79. the king of ABAENi, 5 the king of ADAENI,

80. the king of KIRINI, the king of ALBAYA,

8 1. the king of UGINA, the king of NAZABIA,

82. the king of ABAR-'SIUNI, (and) the king of DAYAENI, G

83. all the 23 kings of the countries of NAiRi, 7

84. in the midst of their lands assembled

85. their chariots and their armies, and

86. to make conflict and battle

1 Nimme, according to Assur-natsir-pal, adjoined Alzi and Dayaeni in
the neighbourhood of Mush.

2 This must be the Dhunibun of Shalmaneser II, eastward of the sources
of the Tigris, on the river of Mush (the modern Kara Su).

3 In the Vannic language the termination ni(s) denoted "belonging to,"
and barzini or barzani signified " a chapel."

4 The Vannic king calls the district in which Palu stands ' ' the land of
Puterias."

5 Perhaps the Abunis of the Vannic inscriptions.

6 Dayaeni was on the northern bank of the Arsanias, to the north of
Mush. It is called the kingdom of " the son of Diaus " in the Vannic
texts, which define it more closely as situated on the Murad Chai, near
Melazgherd.

7 The land of Nairi or "the rivers" denoted in the age of Tiglath-
Pileser I. the districts at the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates. In
the time of Assur-natsir-pal and his successors, on the other hand, it was
the country between Lake Van and the northern frontier of Assyria, and
consequently lay to the south-west of the Nairi of the time of Tiglath-
Pileser I. It will be noticed that there was as yet no kingdom of Ararat
or Van.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH PILESER I 107

87. came on. With the violence of my powerful

88. weapons I pierced them.

89. An overthrow of their widespread armies

90. like the inundation of RIMMON

91. I made. The bodies of their warriors

92. in the plains, the high places of the mountain, and the

walls

93. of their cities like sling-stones (?)

94. I flung to the ground. One hundred and twenty of

their yoke-chariots

95. in the midst of the combat

96. I acquired. Sixty kings

97. of the lands of NAIRI in addition to those who

98. had gone to their assistance

99. with my mace I pursued

100. as far as the Upper Sea.

1 01. Their great fortresses I captured.

COLUMN v

1. Their spoil, their goods (and) their property

2. I carried away. Their cities with fire

3. I burned, I threw down (and) dug up,

4. I reduced to mounds and ruins.

5. Large troops of horses,

6. mules, calves, and the possessions

7. of their homesteads to a countless number

8. I brought back. All the kings

9. of the countries of NAIRI alive my hand

10. captured. To those kings

1 1. I extended mercy, and

12. spared their lives. Their captivity

13. and their bondage in the presence of SAMAS my lord

14. I liberated, and an oath by my great

1 5. gods x unto future days for ever

1 6. and ever that they should be (my) servants I made

them swear.

17. The children, the offspring of their kingdom,

1 Literally " the bann (mamit) of my great gods."

io8 RECORDS OF THE PAST

1 8. as hostages I took.

19. Twelve hundred horses (and) 2000 oxen

20. I imposed upon them as tribute.

21. In their countries I left them.

22. 'Sieni king of DAYAENI,

23. who did not submit to ASUR my lord,

24. captive and bound to my city

25. of ASUR I brought; mercy

26. I extended to him, and from my city of ASUR,

27. as the exalter of the great gods

28. unto exaltation, alive

29. I let him depart. The lands of NAIRI,

30. far-extending, I subdued throughout their whole extent,

31. and all their kings

32. I reduced beneath my feet.

33. In the course of the same campaign

34. against the city of MiLiDiA, 1 of the country of KHANI 2

the great,

35. violent (and) unsubmissive, I marched.

36. The mighty onset of my battle they feared.

37. My feet they took ; I had mercy on them.

38. The city itself I did not capture ; their hostages

39. I accepted. A homer by way of tax of lead

40. as an annual tribute

41. not to be intermitted I imposed upon them.

42. Tiglath-pileser, the destroyer, the quick-moving,

43. the implacable, the deluge of battle.

44. In the service of ASUR my lord, my chariots

45. and warriors I took. In the desert

1 The classical Melitene, now Malatiyeh, on the Euphrates.

2 This district of Kappadokia is called " Khani the Great," to dis-
tinguish it from another Khani near Babylon, whose king Tukulti-mer,
son of Ilu-saba, dedicated a bronze ram's head, now in the British Museum,
to the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLA TH-PILESER I 109

46. I made (my way). To the bank of the waters

47. of the land of the ARMAYANS, 1 the enemies of ASUR

my lord,

48. I marched. From opposite to the land of 'SuKHi, 2

49. as far as the city of GARGAMis, 3 of the land of the

HITTITES (Khatti\

50. in one day I plundered.

51. Their soldiers I slew. Their spoil,

52. their goods and their possessions

53. to a countless number I carried back.

54. The remains of their armies,

55. who before the powerful (weapons) of ASUR my lord

56. had fled and had crossed the EUPHRATES,

57. after them in vessels of inflated (?) skins 4

58. I crossed the EUPHRATES;

59. six of their cities which (were) at the foot of Mount

BISRI 5

60. I captured ; with fire I burned,

6 1. I threw down (and) dug up. Their spoil, their goods

62. and their possessions to my city of ASUR

63. I brought.

64. Tiglath-pileser, the trampler upon the mighty,

65. the slaughterer of the unsubmissive, who weakens 6

66. utterly the strong.

67. To conquer the land of MU'SRI 7 ASUR the lord

1 The Arameans.

2 The Shuhites of the Old Testament, who extended along the western
banks of the Euphrates from the mouth of the Khabour to above that of
the Belikh. ' ' Bildad the Shuhite" (Job ii. n) would be Bel-Dadda, Dadda,
as we learn from the cuneiform inscriptions, being a form of Hadad, the
Syrian name of the god of heaven.

3 Carchemish, the Hittite capital on the Euphrates, between the mouth
of the Sajur and Birejik, now represented by the mounds of Jerablus.

4 Sugase, borrowed from the Accadian 'su, "skin/' and gavsia (whence
the Semitic gubsii] .

5 Now Tel-Basher.

6 Musarbibu, "subduer," according to M. Amiaud, who regards the
word as an example of a parel conjugation (Revue d'Assyriologie, ii. i,
p. 12).

7 Mu'sri or Muzri lay to the north-east of Khorsabad, in the mountain-
ous district now inhabited by the Missouri Kurds. The tribute of a

no RECORDS OF THE PAST

68. urged me, and between the mountains of ELAMUNI

69. TALA and KHARU'SA I made (my way).

70. I conquered the land of MU'SRI throughout its

circuit,

71. I massacred their warriors.

72. The cities I burned with fire, I threw down,

73. I dug up. The armies of the land of QUMANI

74. to the help of the land of MU'SRI

75. had gone. On a mountain with them

76. I fought. A destruction of them I made.

77. To a single city, ARINI, at the foot of mount AI'SA,

78. I drove and shut them up. My feet

79. they took. The city itself I spared.

80. Hostages, tribute and offering

8 1. I laid upon them.

82. In those days all the land of QUMANI,

83. which had prepared to help MU'SRI,

84. gathered together all those countries, and

85. to make conflict and battle

86. were determined. With the violence of my powerful

weapons,

87. with 20,000 of their numerous troops

88. on mount TALA I fought.

89. A destruction of them I made.

90. Their strong forces I broke through.

91. As far as mount KHARU'SA, which (is) in front of the

land of MU'SRI,

92. I pursued their fugitives. The bodies

93. of their warriors in the ravines of the mountain

94. like a moon-stone I flung to the ground.

95. Their corpses over the valleys and the high places of

the mountains

96. I spread. Their great fortresses

97. I captured, with fire I burned,

rhinoceros, yak, elephant, and apes, brought by its inhabitants to Shal-
maneser II, must be explained on the supposition that the caravan road
from the east passed through it.

INSCRIPTION OF TIG LA TH-PILESER I in

98. I threw down (and) dug up, so that they became

mounds and ruins.

99. KHUNU'SA their fortified city

100. like the flood of the deluge I overwhelmed.

COLUMN VI

1. With their mighty armies

2. in the city and the mountains I contended furiously.

3. A destruction of them I made.

4. Their fighting men in the midst of the mountains

5. like a moon-stone I flung down. Their heads

6. like (that) of a sheep I cut off.

7. Their corpses over the valleys and high places of the

mountains

8. I spread. The city itself I captured.

9. Their gods I carried away. Their goods (and) their

property

10. I brought out. The city with fire I burned.

1 1. Three of their great fortresses, which of brickwork

1 2. were constructed, and the circuit of the city itself
13.1 threw down (and) dug up ; to mounds and ruins

1 4. I reduced (them), and salt (?) on the top of them

15. I sowed. A plate of bronze I made;

1 6. the conquest of the lands, which through ASUR my

god (and) my lord

17. I had conquered, that the site of this city should not

(again) be taken,

1 8. nor its wall be constructed, upon (it)

1 9. I wrote. A house of brick on the top of it

20. I built : these plates of bronze

21. in the midst (of it) I placed.

22. In the service of ASUR my lord my chariots

23. and soldiers I took. The city of KIPSUNA

24. their royal city I besieged. The QUMANIANS

25. feared the mighty onset of my battle;

2 6. my feet they took ; their lives I spared.

27. Its great wall and its gate-posts

H2 RECORDS OF THE PAST

28. of bricks I ordered to be destroyed, and

29. from their foundations to their coping

30. they were thrown down and turned into a mound ;

31. and 300 families of evil-doers

32. who (were) within it, who were not submissive to ASUR

my lord,

33. were removed (out of it). I received them. Their

hostages

34. I took. Tribute and offering

35. above what was previously paid upon them

36. I imposed, and the widespread land of QUMANI

37. throughout its circuit under my feet

38. I subdued.

39. In all, 42 countries and their kings

40. from the fords of the lower ZAB

41. (and) the border of the distant mountains

42. to the fords of the EUPHRATES,

43. the land of the HITTITES (Khatte) and the Upper Sea

44. of the setting sun, 1 from the beginning of my sovereignty

45. until my fifth year my hand has conquered.

46. One word in unison have I made them utter.

47. Their hostages have I taken. Tribute

48. and offering have I imposed upon them.

49. I left the numerous roads of foreign peoples

50. which were not attached to my empire :

51. where the ground was favourable in my chariots, and

where it was difficult

52. on my feet, after them

53. I marched. The feet of the enemy

54. I kept from my land.

55. Tiglath-pileser the valiant hero,

56. the holder of the sceptre unrivalled

57. who completes the mission of the supreme (gods).

1 That is, Lake Van.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I . 113

58. URAS and NERGAL have given their forceful

59. weapons and their supreme bow

60. to the hands of my lordship.

6 1. Under the protection of URAS who loves me

62. from young wild bulls, powerful (and) large,

63. in the desert in the land of MITANI

64. and in the city of ARAZIGI/ which (is) in front

65. of the land of the HITTITES, with my mighty bow,

66. a lasso of iron and my pointed

67. spear, their lives I ended :

68. their hides (and) their horns

69. to my city of ASUR I brought.

70. Ten powerful male-elephants 2

71. in the land of HARRAN (Kharrani) and (on) the bank

of the KHABUR

72. I slew. Four elephants alive

73. I captured. Their hides

74. (and) their teeth along with the live

75. elephants I brought to my city ASUR.

7 6. Under the protection of URAS who loves me

77. 120 lions, with my stout heart,

78. in the conflict of my heroism
7 9. on my feet I slew ;

80. and 800 lions in my chariot

8 1. with javelins (?) I slaughtered.

82. All the cattle of the field and the birds of heaven

83. that fly, among my rarities 3

84. I placed.

85. After that the enemies of ASUR throughout their terri-

tories

1 Arazig is the Eragiza of Ptolemy, on the Euphrates, to the north of
Balis and the south of Carchemish. Mitani seems to be the Matenau of
the Egyptians mentioned by Ramses III immediately before Carchemish.

2 I follow Lotz in this rendering.

3 Ni'siggi, borrowed from the Sumerian nin-sig, "secret."

VOL. I I

ii4 RECORDS OF THE PAST

86. I had conquered, the temple of ISTAR of (the city)

ASSUR

87. my lady, the temple of RiMMON, 1 (and) the temple of

the OLDER BEL, 2

88. the temple of the Divinities, 3 the temples of the gods

89. of my city ASUR, which were decayed, I built,

90. I completed. The entrances of their temples

91. I constructed. The great gods, my lords,

92. I introduced within ;

93. I rejoiced the heart of their great divinity.

94. The palaces, the seat of sovereignty

95. belonging to the great fortresses

96. on the borders of my country, which from

97. the time of my fathers through long

98. years had been deserted and ruined and

99. were destroyed, I built (and) completed.

100. The castles of my country that were overthrown

1 01. I enclosed. The conduits 4 throughout all the land

of ASSYRIA

1 02. I fastened together wholly, and an accumulation

103. of grain in addition to that (collected) by my fathers '

104. I brought back (and) heaped up.

105. Troops of horses, oxen (and) asses

COLUMN VII

1. which in the service of ASUR my lord

2. in the countries which I had conquered,

3. as the acquisition of my hands

4. which I took, I collected together, and troops

5. of goats, fallow-deer, wild sheep,

6. (and) antelopes which ASUR and URAS

7. the gods who love me have given

8. for hunting, in the midst of the lofty

1 Here called Matu, " the god of the tempest."

2 Bel of Nipur, called Mul-lil, ' ' the lord of the ghost-world," by the Ac-
cadians, and distinguished from Bel Merodach, the younger Bel of Babylon.

8 This apparently means that the images of several deities were collected
together in the temple of the Older Bel.
4 Literally "sewers."

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 115

9. mountains I have taken ;

10. their herds I enclosed,

1 1. their number like that of a flock

12. of sheep I counted:

13. young lambs, the offspring

14. of their heart, according to the desire of my heart,

15. along with my pure sacrifices

1 6. annually I sacrificed to ASUR my lord.

1 7. The cedar, the likkarin tree

1 8. (and) the allakan tree from the countries

19. which I had conquered, these trees

20. which among the kings

21. my fathers who (were) before (me) none

22. had planted, I took and

23. in the plantations of my country

24. I planted, and the costly fruit

25. of the plantation, which did not exist in my country,

26. I took. The plantations of ASSYRIA

27. I established.

28. Chariots (and horses) bound to the yoke,

29. for the mightiness of my country, more than before

30. I introduced (and) harnessed.

31. To the land of ASUR (I added) land,

32. to its people I added people.

33. The health of my people I improved.

34. A peaceable habitation

35. I caused them to inhabit.

36. Tiglath-pileser, the great, the supreme,

37. whom ASUR and URAS according to the desire

38. of his heart conduct, so that

39. after the enemies of ASUR

40. he has overrun all their territories, and

41. has utterly slaughtered the overweening.

u6 RECORDS OF THE PAST

42. The son of Asur-ris-ilim, 1 the powerful king, the con-

queror

43. of hostile lands, the subjugator

44. of all the mighty.

45. The grandson of Mutaggil-Nu'sku, whom ASUR the

great lord

46. in the conjuration of his steadfast heart

47. had required, and to the shepherding

48. of the land of Asur had raised securely.

49. The true son of Asur-da'an,

50. the upraiser of the illustrious sceptre, who ruled

51. the people of BEL, 2 who the work of his hands

52. and the gift of his sacrifice

53. commended to the great gods, so that

54. he arrived at gray hairs and old age.

55. The descendant of Uras-pileser,

56. the guardian (?) king, the favourite of ASUR,

57. whose might 3 like a sling

58. was spread over his country, and

5 9. the armies of ASUR he shepherded faithfully.

60. In those days the temple of ANU and RIMMON

6 1. the great gods, my lords,

1 Sir H. Rawlinson has suggested that Asur-ris-ilim is the Chushan-rish-
athaim of Judges iii. 8, a name which certainly seems to be corrupt.
Chushan-rish-athaim is called king of Aram Naharaim or ' ' Aram of the two
rivers, " which represents Mesopotamia in the Old Testament, though the
Naharaina of the Egyptian monuments was the region about the Orontes,
while the Assyrian Nahri or Nairi was primarily the district to the north-
west of Lake Van, and afterwards the country to the south of it. Assur-
ris-ilim claims to have ' ' subdued Lullumi and all Quti (or Kurdistan) with
the entrance to its mountain-ranges" (W. A. I., iii. 3, 18) ; but these dis-
tricts lay to the east of Assyria, and no allusion is made to any campaign
in the west.

2 That is, the Babylonians.

3 Literally "fulness" (nubalu, akin to nabli, in the Cuthean Legend of
the Creation, iv. 20).

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 117

62. which in former times Samas-Rimmon, the high-priest 1

of ASUR,

63. the son of Isme-Dagon, the high-priest also of ASUR,

64. built, for 641 years

65. went on decaying,

66. Asur-da'an the king of ASUR,

67. the son of Uras-pileser, the king also of ASUR,

68. pulled down this temple (but) did not rebuild (it) ;

69. for 60 years its foundations

70. were not laid.

71. At the beginning of my reign, ANU

72. and RIMMON the great gods, my lords,

73. who love my priesthood (sartguti),

74. commanded the rebuilding

75. of their habitation. I made bricks;

76. I purified its site ;

77. I undertook its reconstruction; 2 its foundations

78. I laid upon the mass of a huge mound.

79. This place throughout its circuit

80. I piled up with bricks like a double fold (?).

8 1. Fifty tibki* below

82. I sunk (it); upon it

83. the foundations of the temple of ANU and RIMMON

84. I laid with /&/&-stone. 4

85. From its foundations to its roof

86. I built (the temple) ; greater than (it was) before I

reared (it).

87. Two great towers

88. which for the glorification of their great divinities

89. were adapted, I constructed.

1 Pate si.

2 Literally " I took its strength" (read dannat-su, not libnat-su}.

3 The tibku was a measure of length which is explained in the Talmud
as the longer cubit of 7 palms mentioned in 2 Chr. iii. 3.

4 Prof. D. H. Miiller believes the /z^/fo-stone to have been brought from
Armenia, and to have derived its name from the Vannic pulu- si,
"engraved." It is also called /z'/z'-stone. It was a species of white
marble.

ii8 RECORDS OF THE PAST

90. The illustrious temple, a building with cornices, 1

91. the seat of their rejoicing,

92. the habitation of their pleasure,

93. which has been beautified like the star(s) of heaven,

94. and by the art of the workmen

95. has been richly carved,

96. I have worked at, have toiled over, have built

97. (and) have completed. Its interior

98. I compacted to'gether like the heart of heaven ;

99. its walls like the resplendence
100. of the rising of the stars I adorned.
i or. I strengthened its buttresses,

102. and its towers to heaven

103. I lifted; and its roof

104. I fastened together with brickwork.

105. The divining rod, 2

1 06. the oracle of their great

107. divinities within it

1 08. I placed.

109. ANU and RIMMON, the great gods
no. I introduced within (it);

in. on their thrones supreme

112. I seated them ;

113. and the heart of their great divinities

114. I gladdened.

COLUMN VIII

1. BIT-KHAMRI (the temple) of RIMMON,

2. which Samas-Rimmon the high-priest of ASSUR 3

1 Qusuda. In W. A. I., v. 28, 4, gasdu is the synonym of allum, the
Aramaic U&.

2 Elalld. It seems to have been a stem of papyrus covered with
writing.

3 The Pate' sis, or high-priests of Assur, preceded the kings of Assyria,
of whom the first is stated to have been Bel-kapkapu. As Samas-Rimmon,
the high-priest, flourished 701 years before Tiglath-Pileser, his date would
be about B.C. 1830. In Babylonia the high-priests were subject to a suze-
rain king ; it is therefore probable that the high-priests of Assur also ad-
mitted the supremacy of a supreme monarch who may have ruled in
Babylonia. Bricks have been found on the site of Ur in Babylonia bear-
ing the name of Isme-Dagon, "king of Sumer and Accad," but he must

INSCRIPTION OF T1GLATH-PILESER I 119

the son of Isme-Dagon the high-priest of ASUR

had built, had fallen into decay and was ruined.

I purified its site ; from its foundations

to its roof with brick

I bonded (it) together. More than before

I adorned, I established (it).

In its midst pure victims

to RIMMON my lord I sacrificed.

11. In those days the ivory (?) stone, the khalta stone

12. and the mountain stone from the mountains

13. of NAiRi, 1 which through ASUR my lord

14. I had conquered, I carried away;

15. in BIT-KHAMRI, (the temple) of RIMMON my lord

1 6. for days to come I set (them).

17. As I the illustrious temple, the building supreme,

1 8. for the habitation, of ANU and RIMMON the great gods

19. my lords, have laboured at and have not desisted

20. (and) have not rested from the work, 2

21. (but) have quickly completed (it), and

22. have gladdened the heart of their great

23. divinity, (so) may ANU and RIMMON

24. turn (to me) for ever and

25. love the lifting up of my hands ;

26. may they hearken to the earnestness of my prayer ;

27. abundant rains, years

28. of fertility and fatness to my reign

29. may they give; in battle and conflict

30. may they conduct (me) in safety ;

31. all the countries of my enemies, countries

32. that are powerful, and kings that are hostile to me,

33. may they subdue beneath my feet;

have lived at a much earlier period than Samas-Rimmon, whose Babylonian
contemporary was Gul-kisar.

1 Another mode of spelling Nahri.

2 Literally " ha.ve not laid down my side at the work."

120 RECORDS OF THE PAST

34. to myself and my supremacy

35. may they approach in goodness, and

36. my priesthood in the presence of ASUR and their great

37. divinities unto future days

38. may they establish like a mountain for ever.

39. The power of my heroism, the might

40. of my battle, the subjection of enemies,

41. even the foes of ASUR, whom ANU and RIMMON

42. have given for a spoil,

43. on my monuments and my cylinder

44. have I described ; in the temple of ANU and RIMMON

45. the great gods my lords

46. I have deposited (them) for days to come ;

47. the monumental-stones of Samas-Rimmon, -

48. my (fore)father I have anointed with oil; 1 a victim

49. I have sacrificed : to their place I have restored (them).

50. In future days, in the days to come,

51. at any time whatever, may a future prince,

5 2. when the temple of ANU and RIMMON the great

53. gods, my lords, and these towers

54. shall grow old and

55. shall decay, renew their ruins ;

56. my monumental-stones and my cylinder

5 7. may he anoint with oil ; a victim may he sacrifice ;

58. to their place may he restore (them),

59. and may he write his name along with mine.

60. Like myself may ANU and RIMMON

6 1. the great gods in goodness of heart

62. and the acquisition of power kindly conduct him !

63. Whoever my monumental-stones and my cylinder

64. shall shatter, shall sweep away,

] Thereby turning them into Beth-els or consecrated stones. Cf. Gen.
xxviii. 18.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER I 121

65. shall throw into the water,

66. shall burn with fire,

67. shall conceal in the dust ; in the holy house of the god

68. (in) a place invisible shall store (them) up in frag-

ments ;

69. shall obliterate the name that is written, and

70. shall write his own name, and something

71. evil shall devise, and

72. against my monumental-stones

73. shall work injury ;

74. may ANU and RIMMON the great gods, my lords,

75. fiercely regard him and

76. may they curse him with a withering curse.

77. May they overthrow his kingdom ;

78. may they remove the foundation of the throne of his

majesty \

may they annihilate the fruit of his lordship ;
may they break his weapons ;
may they cause destruction to his army ;
in the presence of his enemies in chains
may they seat him. May RIMMON with lightning
destructive smite his land ;
want, hunger, famine

(and) corpses may he lay upon his country ;
may he not bid him live for one day ;
may he root out his name (and) his seed in the land !

89. (Written) in the month Kuzallu, 1 the 29th day, in the

eponymy

90. of Ina-ili-ya-allak the chief of the body-guard. 2

1 " Of sheep-breeding," a name of Sivan or May, according to W. A. I. ,

v. 43. 14.

2 Literally "the mighty men," like the Gibborim of the Old Testa-
ment ; cf. 2 Sam. xxiii. 8. Assyrian chronology was reckoned according
to the eponyms, officers who gave their name to each year of the king's
reign. As the inscription of Rimmon-nirari I, who preceded Tiglath-
Pileser I by about two hundred years, is dated in the eponymy of Shal-
man-garradu ("the god Solomon is a hero"), accurate chronology in
Assyria went back to an early period.

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE
CREATION

TRANSLATED BY THE EDITOR

FRAGMENTS of a long epic poem, describing the
creation of the world in a series of tablets or books,
were discovered by Mr. George Smith among the
cuneiform treasures of the British Museum which
had come from the royal library of Kouyunjik or
Nineveh. The tablets appear to be seven in num-
ber, and since the creation was described as consist-
ing of a series of successive acts, it presented a
curious similarity to the account of the creation
recorded in the first chapter of Genesis.

The epic embodied certain of the ideas and be-
liefs current in Assyria and Babylonia regarding the
creation of the universe. That there were other
ideas and legends is evident from the existence of
another story of the creation, which came originally
from the library of Cutha, and differed entirely from
that of the epic. The epic, as I have pointed out
in my Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Baby-
lonians (p. 385), clearly belongs to a late date. The
gods of the popular religion not only have their

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 123

places in the universe fixed, but even the period and
manner of their origin is described. The element-
ary spirits of the old Accadian faith have passed
into the great gods of Semitic belief, and been finally
resolved into mere symbolical representatives of the
primordial elements of the world. Under a thin
disguise of theological nomenclature, the Babylonian
theory of the universe has become a philosophic
materialism. The gods themselves come and go
like mortal men ; they are the offspring of the ever-
lasting elements of the heaven and earth, and of
that watery abyss out of which mythology had
created a demon of evil, but which the philosopher
knew to be the mother and source of all things.
The Tiamat of the first tablet of the epic is a very
different being from the Tiamat of the fourth.

I much doubt, therefore, whether the epic in its
present form is older than the time of Assur-bani-
pal. It sums up under a poetical garb the teachings
of mythology and philosophy about the origin of
things. The Babylonians had always believed that
the world had been created out of water, and that
the present creation had been preceded by an earlier
creation, an imperfect and chaotic prototype of that
which followed. This earlier creation, in fact, had
been the work of chaos, and the destruction of it by
the younger gods of light and order ushered in the
new creation of the visible world. Light and dark-
ness, chaos and order, are ever struggling one against
the other ; but the victory of light and order was

124 RECORDS OF THE PAST

assured ever since Merodach, the Sun-god, overthrew
the dragon Tiamat, " the wicked serpent " as she is
also called, who represented chaos and anarchy.
Tiamat is the Assyrian equivalent of the Hebrew
tehom, "the deep," upon whose face, according to
Gen. i. 2, darkness had rested before the universe
was made.

The cosmological system of the first tablet found
its way into the pages of a Greek writer, Damaskios,
who lived in the sixth century of our era (De Prim.
Princip. 125, p. 384, ed. Kopp). "The Babylon-
ians," he tells us, " like the rest of the barbarians,
pass over in silence the one principle of the universe,
and they constitute two, Tavthe and Apason, mak-
ing Apason the husband of Tavthe, and denominat-
ing her * the mother of the gods.' And from these
proceeds an only-begotten son Mumis, which, I con-
ceive, is no other than the intelligible world pro-
ceeding from the two principles. From them also
another progeny is derived, Lakhe and Lakhos ; and
again a third, Kissare and Assoros, from which last
three others proceed, Anos and Illinos and Aos.
And of Aos and Davke is born a son called Belos,
who, they say, is the fabricator of the world."

Tavthe is Tiamat or Tiavat, Apason is a/su,
" the abyss," and Mumis is Mummu, who, however,
is identified with Tiamat in the epic, Kissare and
Assoros being Ki-sar and An-sar, "the lower" and
" the upper firmament." Lakhe and Lakhos, that is
to say, Lakhmu or Lakhvu and Lakhamu or La-

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 125

khavu, must be read instead of the Dakhe and Dakhos
of the manuscripts. Belos is Bel-Merodach, " the
younger Bel," in contradistinction to " the older
Bel " of the city of Nipur, one of whose Accadian
names was Illil, the Illinos of Damaskios. It is
probable that the name of Lakhamu was carried to
Canaan along with those of other Babylonian gods
such as Rimmon, Nebo, and Sin. At all events
Lakhmi seems to be the name of a Philistine in
i Chron. xx. 5, and Beth-lehem is best explained as
"the house of Lekhem," like Beth-Dagon, "the
house of Dagon," or Beth-Anoth, "the house of
Anat."

Only the commencement of the first tablet (num-
bered K 5419) has been recovered, but the tablet
was of no great length, as the larger part of the
reverse appears to have been occupied by the colo-
phon. It has been published by Mr. George Smith
in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical A rchce-
ology, iv. 2 (1876), and by Professor Fr. Delitzsch
in his Assyrische Lesestiicke (ist edition, 1878), and
has been translated by Mr. Smith in his Chaldean
Genesis. Translations of it by Dr. Oppert, Dr.
Schrader, and myself have subsequently appeared.
A small fragment of the second tablet has been
found by Professor Delitzsch, containing the colo-
phon, " the second tablet (of the series beginning)
' when above.' ' The third tablet was partly repre-
sented by the fragments numbered K 3473, Rm.
615. Line? 17-42 of the obverse have been

126 RECORDS OF THE PAST

published by Professor Delitzsch in his AssyriscJies
Wb'rterbuch, i. p. 100, and portions of the text are
translated in Smith's Chaldean Genesis. A fragment
of the fourth tablet from the Library of Kouyunjik,
numbered K 3437, has been published by George
Smith (Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch., iv. 2), and Delitzsch
(Ass. Leses., pp. 82, 83), and translated by Smith,
Oppert, Leiiormant, and others ; but nearly the whole
of the text has now been recovered from a tablet
brought from Babylonia by Mr. Rassam (numbered
82-9-18, 3737), and published by Mr. Budge in the
Proceedings of tJie Society of Biblical Arc/oology for
6th December 1887. A translation of it has been
given by myself in my Lectures on the Religion of
tJie Ancient Babylonians, pp. 379 scq. (1887), which I
can now improve in several particulars. The fifth
tablet (K 3567) was published by Smith (Trans. Soc.
Bib. ArcJi., iv. 2), and Delitzsch (Ass. Leses., p. 78),
and translated by Smith, Oppert, and Lenormant.
About one-third of it is lost. Of the seventh (?)
tablet only three small fragments remain (345, 248,
147), published by Delitzsch (Ass. Leses., p. 79),
and translated by Smith in his Chaldean Genesis.
To the third tablet probably belongs an unpublished
fragment (K 3449), describing the preparation of
the bow of Merodach ; an attempt at its translation
will be found in Smith's Chaldean Genesis.

No fragments of the sixth tablet have as yet been
noticed. According to Professor Delitzsch the frag-
ment belonging to the second tablet concludes with

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 127

the prayer of Merodach to capture Tiamat and
avenge the gods, after Anu and Ea had already
declined to undertake the ta.sk (Assyrzsc/ies WorterbucJi,
i. p. 65). The first line of the next tablet is stated
to be, " An-sar (the upper firmament) opened his
mouth." From this point onwards the ends of the
lines are preserved on the fragment numbered K
3473, and from line 9 onwards the beginnings of
the lines on fragment K 3938. They run as
follows :

1. "An-sar opened his mouth, and

2. unto him (Merodach) he speaks the word :

3. ('O lord, I) am yearning 1 in my liver;

4. (against Tiamat) let me send thee, even thee :

5. (with the snare?) thou shalt ensnare (Tiamat), thou

shalt be exalted (?)

6 thy ... to thy presence.

7 their divine porter.

8 let them dwell in feasting.'

9. The god went (saying), let them make the wine.

10. Humbly the god has . . . them; let them hear the

report.

11. He has established and has fixed their . . ., (saying)

thus :

12. 'Do thou .... thy (word) repeat to them.

13. An-sar, moreover, . . . has urged me on;

1 4. the law of (his) heart has made me, even me, to ponder

15. thus: 'Tiamat . . . has seen us;

1 6. she has convened (sitkunaf] an assembly, and is violently

enraged.' "

Here follows the passage translated further on.
The last two lines of the tablet, as we learn from a

1 KLummulu, from khamalu, " to be pitiful."

128 RECORDS OF THE PAST

small fragment, concluded with the words, " (Mero-
dach) ascended (from) their midst (and the great
gods) determined (for him his) destiny."

It will be seen that a good deal of the poem
consists of the words put into the mouth of the god
Merodach, derived possibly from older lays. The
first tablet or book, however, expresses the cosmo-
logical doctrines of the author's own day. It opens
before the beginning of time, the expression "at that
time" answering to the expression "in the beginning"
of Genesis. The heavens and earth had not yet
been created, and since the name was supposed to
be the same as the thing named, their names had
not as yet been pronounced. A watery chaos alone
existed, Mummu Tiamat, " the chaos of the deep."
Out of the bosom of this chaos proceeded the gods
as well as the created world. First came the prim-
aeval divinities Lakhmu and Lakhamu, words of
unknown meaning, and then An-sar and Ki-sar, " the
upper" and " lower firmament." Last of all were
born the three supreme gods of the Babylonian faith,
Anu the sky-god, Bel or Illil the lord of the ghost-
world, and Ea the god of the river and sea.

But before the younger gods could find a suitable
habitation for themselves and their creation it was
necessary to destroy "the dragon" of chaos with all
her monstrous offspring. The task was undertaken
by the Babylonian sun-god Merodach, the son of Ea,
An-sar promising him victory, and the other gods
providing for him his arms. The second tablet was

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 129

occupied with an account of the preparations made
to ensure the victory of light over darkness and
order over anarchy.

The third tablet described the success of the god
of light over the allies of Tiamat. Light was intro-
duced into the world, and it only remained to
destroy Tiamat herself. The combat is described
in the fourth tablet, which takes the form of a poem
in honour of Merodach, and is probably an earlier
poem incorporated into his text by the author of the
epic. Tiamat was slain and her allies put in bond-
age, while the books of destiny which had hitherto
been possessed by the older race of gods were now
transferred to the younger deities of the new world.
The visible heaven was formed out of the skin of
Tiamat, and became the outward symbol of An-sar
and the habitation of Anu, Bel, and Ea, while the
chaotic waters of the dragon became the law-bound
sea ruled over by Ea.

The heavens having been thus made, the fifth
tablet tells us how they were furnished with mansions
for the sun and moon and stars, and how the
heavenly bodies were bound down by fixed laws
that they might regulate the calendar and determine
the year. The sixth tablet probably described the
creation of the earth, as well as of vegetables, birds,
and fish. In the seventh tablet the creation of
animals and reptiles was narrated, and doubtless also
that of mankind.

It will be seen from this that in its main outlines

VOL I. K

130 RECORDS OF THE PAST

the Assyrian epic of the creation bears a striking
resemblance to the account of it given in the first
chapter of Genesis. In each case the history of the
creation is divided into seven successive acts ; in
each case the present world has been preceded by a
watery chaos. In fact the self-same word is used of
this chaos in both the Biblical and Assyrian accounts
tehdm, Tiamat the only difference being that in
the Assyrian story " the deep " has become a mytho-
logical personage, the mother of a chaotic brood.
The order of the creation, moreover, agrees in the
two accounts ; first the light, then the creation of
the firmament of heaven, subsequently the appoint-
ment of the celestial bodies " for signs and for
seasons and for days and years," and next, the
creation of beasts and "creeping things." But the
two accounts also differ in some important par-
ticulars. In the Assyrian epic the earth seems not
to have been made until after the appointment of
the heavenly bodies, instead of before it as in
Genesis, and the seventh day is a day of work
instead of rest, while there is nothing corresponding
to the statement of Genesis that " the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters." But the most
important difference consists in the interpolation of
the struggle between Merodach and the powers of
evil, as a consequence of which light was introduced
into the universe and the firmament of the heavens
was formed.

It has long since been noted that the conception

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 131

of this struggle stands in curious parallelism to the
verses of the Apocalypse (Rev. ! xii. 7-9) : " And
there was war in heaven : Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon ; and the dragon fought
and his angels, and prevailed not ; neither was their
place found any more in heaven. And the great
dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the
Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."
We are also reminded of the words of Isaiah xxiv.
21, 22 : "The Lord shall visit the host of the high
ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth
upon the earth. And they shall be gathered to-
gether, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and
shall be shut up in prison." It may be added that
an Assyrian bas-relief now in the British Museum
represents Tiamat with horns and claws, tail and
wings.

There is no need of drawing attention to the pro-
found difference of spiritual conception that exists
between the Assyrian epic and the first chapter of
Genesis. The one is mythological and polytheistic,
with an introduction savouring of the later material-
ism of the schools ; the other is sternly monotheistic.
Between Bel-Merodach and the Hebrew God there
is an impassable gulf.

It is unfortunate that the last lines of the epic in
which the creation of man would have been recorded
have not yet been recovered. A passage in one of
the early magical texts of Babylonia, however, goes
to show that the Babylonians believed that the

132 RECORDS OF THE PAST

woman was produced from the man, conformably
to the statement in Gen. ii. 22, 23. We there read
of the seven evil spirits (W. A. I., iv. i. i. 36, 37)
that " the woman from the man do they bring
forth."

THE ASSYRIAN EPIC OF THE CREATION

FIRST TABLET OF THE STORY OF THE CREATION

OBVERSE

1. At that time the heaven above had not yet announced,

2. or the earth beneath recorded, a name;

3. the unopened 1 deep was their generator,

4. MUMMU-TIAMAT (the chaos of the sea) was the mother

of them all.

5. Their waters were embosomed as one, 2 and

6. the corn-field 3 was unharvested, the pasture was un-

grown.

7. At that time the gods had not appeared, any of them ;

8. by no name were they recorded, no destiny (had they

fixed).

9. Then the (great) gods were created,

10. LAKHMU and LAKHAMU issued forth (the first),
n. until they grew up (when)

12. AN-SAR and KI-SAR were created.

13. Long were the days, extended (was the time, until)

14. the gods ANU, (BEL and EA were born),

15. AN-SAR and KI-SAR (gave them birth).

The rest of the tablet is lost.
1 Or "first-born," if we adopt Delitzsch's reading ristu instead of la

2 This is shown to be the signification of istenis by S 1140, 8.

3 Gipara ; seeW. A. I., V. i. 48-50. Nirba kdn yusakhnapu giparu
'sippati summukha inbu, "the corn-god continuously caused the corn-
field to grow, the papyri were gladdened with fruit ; " S 799, 2. Ana
gipari eltu erubbi (Accadian mi-para-ki azagga imma-dan-tutu], " to the
holy cornfield he went down." The word has nothing to do with
' ' clouds " or " darkness. ' '

134 RECORDS OF THE PAST

THIRD TABLET OF THE STORY OF THE CREATION

OBVERSE

17. "The gods have marched round her, 1 all of them;

1 8. up to those whom thou hast created at her side I

have gone."

1 9. When they were gathered (?) beside her, TIAMAT they

approached.

20. The strong one (MERODACH), the glorious, who desists

not night or day,

21. the exciter to battle, was disturbed in heart.

22. Then they marshalled (their) forces; they create dark-

ness.

23. " The mother of KHUBUR, 2 the creatress of them all,

24. I pursued with (my) weapons unsurpassed; (then) did

the great snake(s) bite. 3

25. With my teeth sharpened unsparingly did I bite.

26. With poisoned breath like blood their bodies I filled.

27. The raging vampires 4 I clothed with terror.

28. I lifted up the lightning-flash, on high I launched (it). 5

29. Their messenger SAR-BABA

30. Their bodies were struck, but it pierced not their

breasts.

31. I made ready the dragon, the mighty serpent and the

god LAKHA(MA),

1 I ' skhuru-si.

2 Khubur is identified with 'Su-edin on the eastern side of the Baby-
lonian plain in W. A. I., ii. 50, 51. Professor Delitzsch suggests that
the expression ummu Khubur may be the origin of the name Omoroka
assigned by Berdssos to Tiamat.

3 Ittaqiir from naqaru. In Hebrew the verb is used especially of
piercing the eyes.

4 The usumgalli or "solitary monsters" were fabulous beasts who
were supposed to devour the corpses of the dead, and were therefore not
exactly vampires which devoured the living, but corresponded rather with
one of the creatures mentioned in Is. xiii. 21, 22; xxxiv. 14.

Umta^sir}.

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 135

32. the great reptile, the deadly beast and the scorpion-

man, 1

33. the devouring 2 reptiles, the fish-man 1 and the gazelle-

god, 3

34. lifting up (my) weapons that spare not, fearless of

battle,

35. strong through the law which (yields?) not before the

foe.

36. The eleven-fold (offspring), like him (their messenger),

were utterly (overthrown ?).

37. Among the gods her forces

38. I humbled the god KiNGU 4 in the sight (of his con-

sort?), the queen.

39. They who went in front before the army (I smote?),

40. lifting up (my) weapons, a snare for TI(AMAT).

1 According to the gth tablet of the Epic of Gisdhubar, ' ' the scorpion-
men" guard the gate between "the twin mountains" through which the
sun passes at its rising and setting. The fish-man was Cannes, after-
wards identified with Ea, who brought wisdom and culture to Chaldaea
out of the Persian Gulf.

2 Dapruti (see W. A. I. , v. 16, 80) from the same root as diparalu,
" a flame."

3 The gazelle -god was identified by the later mythology of Baby-
lonia, sometimes with Ea the god of Eridu, sometimes with Bel the god
of Nipur : see my Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians,
pp. 283 seq.

4 Kingu was the husband of Tiamat.

136 RECORDS OF THE PAST

FOURTH TABLET OF THE STORY OF THE CREATION

OBVERSE

1. So he established for him (i.e. MERODACH) the shrine

of the mighty ;

2. before (?) his fathers for a kingdom did he found (it). 1

3. Yea, thou art glorious among the great gods ;

4. thy destiny is unrivalled; thy gift-day 2 is (that of)

ANU.

5. O MERODACH, thou art glorious among the great

gods;

6. thy destiny is unrivalled; thy gift-day is (that of)

ANU.

7. Since that day unchanged is thy command.

8. High and low entreat thy hand :

9. may the word that goes forth from thy mouth be

established ; untroubled is thy gift-day.

10. None among the gods has surpassed thy power

11. at the time when (thy hand) founded the shrine of the

god of the sky. 3

12. May the place of their gathering (?) become thy home !

13. " O MERODACH, thou art he who avenges us ;

14. we give thee the sovereignty, (we) the hosts of all the

universe !

1 5. Thou possessest (it), and in the assembly (of the gods)

mayest thou. exalt thy word !

1 6. Never may thy weapons be broken ; 4 may thine ene-

mies tremble !

17. O lord, be gracious to the soul of him who putteth

his trust in thee,

1 These are the last two lines of the Third Tablet.
' 2 'Sigar. In W. A. I., v. i, 12, we read that the i2th of lyyar was
the 'sigar or "festival " of the goddess Gula.

3 Literally " the covering of heaven " (nalbas same}.

4 Literally "may they open."

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 137

8. and destroy 1 the soul of the god who has hold of

evil."

9. Then they set in their midst his saying unique ; 2

20. to MERODACH their first-born they spake :

21. "May thy destiny, O lord, go before the god of

heaven ;
2 2. may he confirm (?) the destruction and creation of all

that is said.
2 3. Set thy mouth ; let it destroy his word :

24. turn, speak unto it, and let him lift up his word

(again)." 3

25. He spake and with his mouth destroyed his word;

26. he turned, he spake unto it and his word was re-created.

27. Like (the word) that issues from his mouth the gods

his fathers saw it :

28. they rejoiced, they approached MERODACH the king.

29. They bestowed upon him the sceptre (and) throne and

reign

30. they gave him a weapon unsurpassed, consuming the

hostile.

31. " Go " (they said), " and cut off the life of TIAMAT ;

32. let the winds carry her blood to secret places."

33. The gods his fathers also hear the report of EA :

34. "A path of peace and obedience is the road I have

caused (him) to take."

35. There was too the bow, as his weapon he prepared

(it);

36. he made the club swing, he fixed its seat;

37. and he lifted up the sacred weapon 4 which he bade

his right hand hold.

38. The bow and the quiver he hung at his side ;

1 Literally "pour out."

2 The "saying," or "Word," is regarded as having a real existence
which could be created, destroyed, and re-created by Merodach. The
" Word" is similarly personified in Zech. ix. i.

3 We have here the same idea as in the "burden" of the Hebrew
prophets, the Assyrian verb "to lift up" being nasu, the Hebrew nasd,
whence massd, "a burden" or "oracle."

4 The badhdhu was the name of the weapon sacred to Merodach. From
the sculptures it vould appear to have been a kind of boomerang.

138 RECORDS OF THE PAST

39. he set the lightning before him ;

40. with a glance of swiftness he filled his body.

41. He made also a snare to enclose the dragon of the

sea.

42. He seized the four winds that they might not issue

forth, any one of them,

43. the south wind, the north wind, the east wind (and)

the west wind.

44. His hand brought the snare near the bow l of his father

ANU.

45. He created the evil wind, the hostile wind, the storm,

the tempest,

46. the four winds, the seven winds, the whirlwind, the

unending wind ;

47. and he caused the winds which he had created to

issue forth, the seven of them,

48. confounding the dragon TIAMAT, as they swept after

him.

49. Then the lord lifted up the deluge, his mighty weapon.

50. He rode in the chariot of destiny that retreats without

a rival. 2

51. He stood firm and hung the four reins at its side.

52. (He held the weapon?) unsparing, that overfloods her

panoply.

53 their teeth carry poison.

54 they sweep away the learned.

55 might and battle.

56. On the left they open their

57 fear

58. With the lightning-flash and .... he crowned his

head.

59. He directed also (his way), he made his path descend,

and

60. humbly he set the .... before him.

6 1. By (his) command he kept back the ....

62. His finger holds the

1 Here we have a curiously weakened form, kisti instead of qasti.

2 Or if we correct the text and read makhri la galidta, " that fears not
a rival."

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 139

63. On that day they exalted him, the gods exalted him,

64. the gods his fathers exalted him, the gods exalted

him.

65. Then the lord approached; he catches TIAMAT by her

waist ;

66. she seeks the huge bulk (?) of KINGU her husband,

67. she looks also for his counsel.

68. Then the rebellious one (TIAMAT) appointed 1 him the

overthrower of the command of BEL.

69. But the gods his helpers who marched beside him

70. beheld (how MERODACH) the first-born held their yoke.

71. He laid judgment on TIAMAT (but) she turned not her

neck.

72. With her hostile lip(s) she announced opposition.

73. (Then) the gods (came) to the help of the lord, sweep-

ing after thee :

74. they gathered their (forces) together to where thou wast.

75. (And) the lord (launched) the deluge, his mighty

weapon ;

76. (against) TIAMAT, whom he requited, he sent it with

these words :

77. "(War) on high thou hast excited.

78. (Strengthen ?) thy heart and muster (thy troops) against

the god(s).

79 their fathers beside (thee).

80 thou hast opposed

8 1 to (thy) husband.

82 lordship^}

83 thou seekest.

REVERSE

1. (Against) the gods my fathers thou has directed thy

hostility.

2. Thou harnesser of thy companions, may thy weapons

reach their bodie(s).

3. Stand up, and I and thou will fight together."

4. When TIAMAT heard this,

1 Read ip-qid.

140 RECORDS OF THE PAST

5. she uttered her former spells, she repeated her com-

mand.

6. TIAMAT also cried out vehemently with a loud voice.

7. From its roots she strengthened (her) seat completely.

8. She recites an incantation, she casts a spell,

9. and the gods of battle demand for themselves their

arms.

10. Then TIAMAT attacked MERODACH the chief prophet

of the gods ;

11. in combat they joined; they met in battle.

12. And the lord outspread his snare (and) enclosed her.

13. He sent before him the evil wind to seize (her) from

behind.

1 4. And TIAMAT opened her mouth to swallow it.

15. He made the evil wind enter so that she could not

close her lips.

1 6. The violence of the winds tortured her stomach, and

17. her heart was prostrated and her mouth was twisted.

1 8. He swung the club, he shattered her stomach;

1 9. he cut out her entrails ; he overmastered (her) heart ;

20. he bound her and ended her life.

21. He threw down her corpse; he stood upon it.

22. When TIAMAT who marched before (them) was con-

quered,

23. he dispersed her forces, her host was overthrown,

24. and the gods her allies who marched beside her

25. trembled (and) feared (and) turned their backs.

26. They escaped and saved their lives.

2 7. They clung to one another fleeing helplessly.

28. He followed them and shattered their weapons.

29. He cast his snare and they are caught in his net.

30. Knowing (?) the regions they are filled with grief.

31. They bear their sin, they are kept in bondage,

32. and the elevenfold offspring are troubled through fear.

33. The spirits as they march perceived (?) the glory (of

MERODACH).

34. His hand lays blindness (on their eyes).

35. At the same time their opposition (is broken) from

under them ;

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 141

36. and the god KINGU who had (marshalled) their

(forces)

37. he bound him also along with the god of the tablets

(of destiny in) his right hand.

38. And he took from him the tablets of destiny (that were)

upon him.

39. With the string of the stylus he sealed (them) and

held the ... of the tablet.

40. From the time when he had bound (and) laid the yoke

on his foes

41. he led the illustrious enemy captive like an ox,

42. he established fully the victory of AN-SAR 1 over the

foe;

43. MERODACH overcame the lamentation of (EA) the lord

of the world.

44. Over the gods in bondage he strengthened his watch,

and

45. TIAMAT whom he had bound he turned head back-

wards ;

46. then the lord trampled on the underpart of TIAMAT.

47. With his club unbound he smote (her) skull;

48. he broke (it) and caused her blood to flow ;

49. the north wind bore (it) away to secret places. 2

50. Then his father (EA) beheld (and) rejoiced at the

savour ;

51. he caused the spirits (?) to bring a peace-offering to

himself.

1 The primaeval god of the Firmament.

2 The meaning of the blood of Tiamat is shown by the two contradic-
tory Babylonian legends of the creation which Berossos, the Chaldean
historian, has amalgamated together : "Belos (Merodach) came and cut
the woman (Tiamat) asunder, and of one half of her he formed the earth,
and of the other half the heavens, and at the same time destroyed the
animals within her (in the abyss). All this was an allegorical description
of nature. For, the whole universe consisting of moisture, and animals
being continually generated therein, the deity above mentioned (Belos) cut
off his own head ; upon which the other gods mixed the blood, as it
gushed out, with the earth, and from thence men were formed. On this
account it is that they are rational and partake of divine knowledge."
Similarly, according to Philon Byblios, Phoenician cosmology declared that
the blood of Uranos or Baal-samaim, when mutilated by his son Kronos
near the rivers and fountains, flowed into them and fertilised the earth.

142 RECORDS OF THE PAST

52. So the lord rested; his body he feeds.

53. He strengthens (his) mind (?), he forms a clever plan,

54. and he stripped her of (her) skin like a fish, according

to his plan ;

55. he described her likeness and (with it) overshadowed

the heavens ;

56. he stretched out the skin, he kept a watch,

57. he urged on her waters that were not issuing forth ;

58. he lit up the sky; the sanctuary (of heaven) rejoiced,

and

59. he presented himself before the deep, the seat of EA.

60. Then the lord measured (TIAMAT) the offspring of the

deep ;

6 1. the chief prophet made of her l image the house of the

Firmament. 2

62. -SARRA which he had created (to be) the heavens

63. the chief prophet caused ANU, BEL and EA to inhabit

as their stronghold.

64. [First line of the next tablet -\ He prepared the man-

sions of the great gods.

65. [COLOPHON.] One hundred and forty-six lines of the

4th tablet (of the series beginning:) "When on
high unproclaimed."

66. According to the papyri of the tablet whose writing had

been injured.

67. Copied for NEBO his lord by Nahid-Merodach, the son

of the irrigator, for the preservation of his life

68. and the life of all his house. He wrote and placed (it)

in -ZiDA. 3

1 " Its" in the original.

2 -Sarra.

3 -Zida, " the constituted house," was the great temple of Nebo in
Borsippa, now represented by the Birs-i-Nimrud. The copy of the text
deposited in it by Nahid-Merodach was probably made in the Persian age.

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 143

FIFTH TABLET OF THE STORY OF THE CREATION

OBVERSE

1. He prepared the twin mansions of the great gods.

2. He fixed the stars, even the twin-stars, 1 to correspond

with them.

3. He ordained the year, appointing the signs of the

Zodiac 2 over (it).

4. For each of the twelve months he fixed three stars,

5. from the day when the year issues forth to the close.

6. He founded the mansion of (the Sun-god) the god of

the ferry-boat, that they might know their bonds,

7. that they might not err, that they might not go astray

in any way.

8. He established the mansion of BEL and EA along with

himself.

9. Moreover he opened the great gates on either side,

10. he strengthened the bolts on the left hand and on the

right,

1 1. and in the midst of it he made a staircase.

12. He illuminated the Moon-god that he might be porter

of the night,

13. and ordained for him the ending of the night that the

day may be known,

1 4. (saying :) " Month by month, without break, keep

watch in thy disk.

15. At the beginning of the month light up the night,

1 6. announcing thy horns that the heaven may know.

1 7. On the seventh day, (filling thy) disk

1 8. thou shalt open indeed (its) narrow contraction.

1 9. At that time the sun (will be) on the horizon of heaven

at thy (rising).
2 o. Thou shalt cut off its ... :

1 Lu-masi, literally " the twin oxen," of which seven were reckoned.

2 Mizrata, which is the same word as the mazzaroth of Job xxxviii. 32.

I 4 4 RECORDS OF THE PAST

21. (Thereafter) towards the path of the sun thou shalt

approach.

22. (Then) the contracted size of the sun shall indeed

change (P) 1

23 seeking its path.

24 descend and pronounce judgment.

The rest of the obverse and the first three lines of the reverse
are destroyed.

REVERSE

4. [First line of the next tablet .-] When the assembly of the

gods had heard him.

5. Fifth tablet of the (series beginning) "When on high."

6. The property of Assur-bani-pal the king of hosts, the

king of Assyria.

1 The mutilated condition of the tablet makes the translation of this
line extremely doubtful. There may be a' reference in it to the star Al-tar
or Dapinu.

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 145

THE SEVENTH TABLET OF THE STORY OF THE CREATION

OBVERSE

1. At that time the gods in their assembly created (the

beasts).

2. They made perfect the mighty (monsters).

3. They caused the living creatures (of the field) to come

forth,

4 the cattle of the field, (the wild beasts) of the field and
the creeping things (of the field).

5. (They fixed their habitations) for the living creatures

(of the field).

6. They distributed x (in their dwelling-places) the cattle

and the creeping things of the city.

7. (They made strong) the multitude of creeping things,

all the offspring (of the earth).

8 in the assembly of my family.

9 EA the god of the illustrious face.

10 the multitude of creeping things did I make

strong.
ii the seed of LAKHAMA did I destroy,

The rest is lost.
1 Yuzahi(zu}.

VOL. I

146 RECORDS OF THE PAST

THE FOLLOWING FRAGMENT (K 3449) BELONGS TO THE
STORY OF THE CREATION, BUT ITS POSITION is UNCERTAIN

OBVERSE

1. The snare which they had made the gods beheld.

2. They beheld also the bow, how it had been stored up.

3. The work they had wrought they lay down,

4. and ANU lifted (it) up in the assembly of the gods.

5. He kissed the bow ; it ....

6. and he addressed the arch of the bow, (saying) thus :

7. "The wood I stretch once 1 and yet again.

8. The third time is the ... of the star of the bow in

heaven.

9. I have established also the position of ...
i o. Since the fates " .

1 Istenumma.

THE BABYLONIAN STORY OF THE CREA-
TION ACCORDING TO THE TRADITION
OF CUTHA

TRANSLATED BY THE EDITOR

BESIDES the story of the Creation in a series of
successive acts, Mr. George Smith brought to light
the fragments of two tablets containing another
legend of the Creation which varied very consider-
ably from it. The tablets belonged to the library of
Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh, but the colophon informs
us that they had been copied from older documents
which came from the library of Cutha, now Tel
Ibrahim, in Babylonia. The text has never been
published, but a translation was given of it by Mr.
Smith in his Chaldean Genesis, and a revised version
by myself in the Records of the Past, vol. xi. As
much progress has been made in cuneiform studies
during the ten years which have elapsed since the
latter was published, I now give another translation
of the inscription, embodying the improvements
which our increased knowledge of the Assyrian
language has enabled me to make.

The Cuthaean legend, it will be observed, knows

148 RECORDS OF THE PAST

nothing of a creation in successive acts. Chaos is a
period when as yet writing was unknown. But the
earth already existed, and was inhabited by the
chaotic brood of Tiamat, imperfect first attempts, as
it were, of nature, who lived in a city underground.
They were destroyed, not by Merodach, the god of
Babylon, but by Nergal, the patron-deity of Cutha,
who is identified with Nerra, the god of pestilence,
and Ner, the mythical monarch of Babylonia who
reigned before the Deluge. The words of the poem
are put into the mouth of Nergal, and the poem itself
was written for his great temple at Cutha.

The legend of Cutha agrees better with that
reported by Berossos than does the legend of the
Epic. In both alike we have a first creation of
living beings, and these beings are of a composite
nature, the offspring of Tiamat or Chaos. In both
alike the whole brood is exterminated by the gods
of light.

The date to which the legend in its present form
may be assigned is difficult to determine. The in-
scription is written in Semitic only, like the other
creation-tablets, and consequently cannot belong to
the pre-Semitic age. It belongs, moreover, to an
epoch when the unification of the deities of Baby-
lonia had already taken place, and the circle of the
great gods was complete. Ea, Istar, Zamama,
Anunit, even Nebo and Samas, are all referred to in
it. Possibly it may be dated in the age of Kham-
muragas (cir. B.C. 2350).

THE CUTH^EAN LEGEND OF THE CREATION

COLUMN I

Many lines are lost at the commencement.

2. His word (is) the command of the gods . . .

3. His glancing-white instrument (is) the glancing-white

instrument (of the gods).

4. (He is) lord of that which is above and that which is

below, the lord of the spirits of earth,

5. who drinks turbid waters and drinks not clear waters ;

6. in whose field that warrior's weapon all that rests

there (?)

7. has captured (and) destroyed.

8. On a tablet he wrote not, he opened not (the mouth),

and bodies and produce

9. he caused not to come forth in the land, and I

approached him not.

i o. Warriors with the body of a bird of the valley, men

11. with the faces of ravens,

1 2. did the great gods create.

13. In the ground the gods created his city.

14. TIAMAT gave them suck.

15. Their progeny 1 the mistress of the gods created.

1 6. In the midst of the mountains they grew up and became

heroes and

17. increased in number.

1 8. Seven kings, brethren, appeared as begetters;

19. six thousand (in number were) their armies.

20. The god BA-NINI their father (was) king; their mother

21. the queen (was) MELILI ;

1 Sasur.

I5o RECORDS OF THE PAST

22. their eldest brother who went before them, ME-MANGAB 1

(was) his name;

23. (their) second brother, ME-DUDU 2 (was) his name;

24. (their) third brother, [ME-MAN]PAKH (was) his name ;

25. (their) fourth brother, [ME-DA]DA (was) his name;

2 6. (their) fifth brother, [ME-MAN]TAKH (was) his name ;

27. (their) sixth brother, [ME-RU]RU S (was) his name;

28. (their seventh brother, ME-RARA was) his name.

COLUMN II

Many lines are destroyed.

1. ... the evil curse . . .

2. He turned his word . . .

3. On a ... I arranged . . .

4. On a tablet the evil curse he wrote (?)...

5. In ... I urged the augurs on.

6. Seven against seven in breadth I arranged (them).

7. I set up the holy reeds (?).

8. I prayed to (?) the great gods,

9. ISTAR, . . ., ZAMAMA, ANUNIT,

10. NEBO, . . . , (and) SAMAS the warrior,

11. the son (of the Moon-god, the . . . ) of the gods my

couriers.
12 he did not give, and

13. thus I spake to my heart

1 4. saying : Verily it is I, and

1 5. never may I go ... beneath the dust !

1 6. never may I go ... the prayer.

17. May I go when the son . . . my heart ;

1 8. and may I renew the iron, may I assume the black

garment. 4

1 "The voice" or "thunder strikes." The Accadian proper names
found in the legend indicate that although in its present form it is of
Semitic origin it must be based on older pre-Semitic materials. Moreover,
the expression "his name" is written in Accadian (mu-ni) which shows
that it has been quoted from an Accadian text.

2 "The voice goes up and down."

3 " The voice creates. " 4 Ati lutsbat.

THE BAB YL ONI AN STOR Y OF THE CREA TION 1 5 1

19. The first year as it passed

20. one hundred and twenty thousand warriors I caused to

go forth, and among them

21. not one returned alive.

22. The second year as it passed I caused 90,000 soldiers

to go forth and none returned alive.

23. The third year as it passed I caused 60,700 to go forth,

and none returned.

24. They were carried away, they were smitten with sick-

ness. I ate,

25. I lamented, 1 1 rested.

26. Thus did I speak to my heart saying, " Verily it is I,

and

27. (yet) what have I left to reign over?

28. I am a king who makes not his country whole,

COLUMN III

1. and a shepherd who makes not his people whole,

2. Since I have produced corpses and have left a desert." :

3. With terror of men, 3 night, death (and) plague have I

cursed it.

4. With fear, violence, destruction (and) famine

5. (I have effected) the overthrow of all that exist.

6 ....... there descended.

7 ....... (I) caused a deluge.

8 ........ that deluge.

9 ......... all

i o. the foundations (of the earth were shaken ?)

11. The gods .....

12. Thou didst command me, and . . .

13. and they are created (?) . . .

14. Thou protectest . . .

15. A memorial of drinking and . . .
1 6. in supplication to Ea . . .

17. holy memorial sacrifices ....

3 Salummat nisi. This passage shows that salummat cannot signify
"brilliance," as Jensen supposes.

152 RECORDS OF THE PAST

1 8. holy laws ....

19.1 called the sons of the augurs . . .

20. seven against seven in breadth I arranged (them).

21. I placed the holy reeds (?)...

22. I implored (?) the (great) gods,

23. ISTAR, . . ., (ZAMAMA, ANUNIT),

24. NEBO, . . . (and SAMAS the warrior)

25. the son (of the Moon-god, the ... of the gods my

couriers)

COLUMN IV

Many lines are lost.

1. With ....

2. the men ....

3. the city NAK X ....

4. a city which ....

5. to ....

6. powerful king ....

7. the gods ....

8. my hand ....

9. Thou, O king, high priest, 2 shepherd, or any one else,

10. whom the god shall call (to) rule the kingdom,

1 1. this tablet I have made for thee, (this) stele I have in-

scribed for thee

1 2. in the city of CUTHA in the temple of SULIM ; 3

1 3. in the ark 4 of NERGAL I have left it for thee.

14. Hearken to the voice 5 of this stele, and

15. remove it not, forget 6 it not;

1 6. fear not, tremble not !

17. May he establish thy seat !

1 8. Mayest thou achieve success 7 in thy works !

1 Perhaps nak(ru) "foreign." z Pate' si.

3 The name of the great temple of Nergal in Cutha. For the reading
see my Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians.

4 Papakh, " the ark" in which the image of the god was carried, and
which stood in the inner shrine or " holy of holies " (parakku}.

fi Literally "mouth." 6 Tensi for temsi. 7 Sijxir.

THE BABYLONIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 153

19. Build up 1 thy fortresses !

20. Fill 2 thy canals with water !

21. May thy papyri, 3 thy corn, thy silver,

22. thy goods, thy property,

23. (and) thy furniture, (all) of them

24. (be multiplied) ! strengthen the ... for (thy) hands !
25 make perfect the stores of thine increase !

26. (As for the evil one) thou shalt cause him to go forth.

27. (As for the harmful one) thou shalt enchain him.

1 Urrim, whence arammu, "a wall."
2 Nabli; comp. nubalu, W. A. I., i. 15, vii. 57. 3 Pi'sannati.

BABYLONIAN LAWSUITS AND
JUDGMENTS

TRANSLATED BY DR. OPPERT

HAVING worked for more than five-and-twenty years
at the Babylonian and Assyrian deeds of contract and
legal decisions, and having explained the documents
relating to these subjects which have been discovered
in Mesopotamia, I am now able to state that the
meaning of these difficult texts is at length fairly
well understood by us. The simplest explanation is
that which is the most difficult to obtain, and I have
no doubt that the translations and interpretations I
offer will appear to many scholars so easy and con-
clusive as to make them assume that any one might
have discovered them at the outset. Fortunately,
however, not only the translations of other scholars,
but my own imperfect ones as well, have been pub-
lished, and will thus convince younger students of the
immense difficulty there is in arriving at results which
seem so evident.

The first texts which I have selected contain cer-
tain contracts and legal decisions relating indubitably
to captive Jews who had been carried to Babylon after

BAB YLQNIAN LA WSUITS AND JUDGMENTS 155

the destruction of Jerusalem. One of the most inter-
esting of them is a lawsuit commenced by a Jewish
slave named Barachiel in order to recover his original
status. A copy of the text has been published by
Father Strassmaier in the Transactions of the Oriental
Congress at Leyden, No. 42.

My translation of it, which will appear in the
Transactions of the Oriental Congress at Vienna, has
been amended in one or two points. The translations
offered by Dr. V. Revillout and a young Assyriologist,
Dr. Peiser, are very imperfect, Dr. Revillout having
entirely misunderstood the nature of the suit referred
to, and having fallen into several grammatical errors,
while Dr. Peiser's rendering is not less unacceptable.

The case was as follows : Barachiel, who bears
the same name as the father of Elihu in the Book of
Job (xxxii. 2, 6), had been the property of a wealthy
person named Akhi-nuri, who had sold him to a widow
of the name of Gaga, about 570 B.C. He remained in
the house of this lady as a slave, with the power of
liberating himself by paying a sum equal to his pecu-
lium, or private property which he had been allowed
to acquire, like a slave in ancient Rome ; but it seems
that he was never fortunate enough to be able to afford
the sum of money required. He remained with Gaga
twenty-one years, and was considered the res or pro-
perty of the house, and as such was handed over in
pledge, was restored, and finally became the dowry of
Nubta ("Bee"), the daughter of Gaga. Nubta gave
him to her son and husband in exchange for a house

1 56 RECORDS OF THE PAST

and some slaves. After the death of the two ladies
he was sold to the wealthy publican Itti-Marduk-
baladh, from whose house he escaped twice. Taken
the second time, he instituted an action in order that
he might be recognised as a free-born citizen, of the
family of Bel-rimanni ; and to prove that he was of
noble origin he pretended that he had performed the
matrimonial solemnities at the marriage of his master's
daughter Qudasu with a certain Samas-mudammiq. 1
Such a performance, doubtless, implied that the officiat-
ing priest was of free birth, and that no slave or freed-
man was qualified to take part in it. He declared, " I
am a mar-bant" or " descendant of a banti" literally a
" generator," or "ancestor," one of those semi-mythical
heroes who gave their names to the noble families of
Babylon. 2 " I belong," he went on to say, " to the
family of Bel-rimanni," who in other texts is called a
high-priest. The case was brought before a court of
justice, and the royal judges asked Barachiel to prove
that he was of free birth. This actio prcejudicialis de
ingenuitate was urged for and against, and eventually
Barachiel was obliged to retract his former statements.
He was unable to rebut the evidence alleged against
him, and though it is probable that the two married
persons whose "hands he had joined" were dead,
other witnesses came forward who proved that he

1 The father of Akhi-nuri was Nabu - nadin - akh ( ' ' Nebo gives a
brother "), and the father of the son-in-law bears the same name. But it
is by no means certain that the uncle married his niece, since the two
persons may have been different.

2 It would be a useful work to collect the names of all the band or
ancestors, men of noble birth, like Egibi, Nur-Sin, and others.

BAB YL ONI AN LA WSUITS AND JUDGMENTS 157

was a slave with the power of purchasing his
freedom.

The exact date at which the judgment was delivered
is not quite certain, but it must be later than the
seventh year of Nabonidus, when the father Itti-
Marduk-baladh was still alive.

I will now proceed to make some further remarks
on the details of the case, as it is very interesting, and
offers some useful hints as to the legal procedure of
the Babylonians.

The name of Bariki-ili or Barachiel is evidently
that of a Jew. He is called " a slave of ransom," that
is to say, not a slave who has already purchased his
freedom, since in that case he would have been free,
but a slave who was allowed by special laws to employ
his private fortune in the work of liberating himself.
He professes to have been the avil taslisu or "joiner"
of the hands of bride and bridegroom at a wedding
which must have taken place before the thirty-fifth
year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, when he still belonged
to the house of Akhi-nuri, "the seller of the slave," as
he is called at the end of the text

After the declaration of the slave, the document is
comparatively easy to understand. The judges, after
perusing all the evidence, do not find any proofs that
Barachiel was a man of free birth, and accordingly say
to him : " Prove to us that you are the descendant of
a (noble) ancestor." Thereupon Barachiel confesses
that he is not free-born, but has twice run away from
the house of his master ; as, however, the act was seen

158 RECORDS OF THE PAST

by many people he was afraid, and said, " I am the
son of a (noble) ancestor." " But I am not free-born,"
he continues, and then gives an account of the events
of his life.

The words mar-banut in line 16 signify "condition
of being a free-born citizen," and not " letter of client-
ship," as Dr. Peiser supposes. The expression " letter
of citizenship " (dippi mar-banuf] occurs several times,
and signifies the warrant given by a master to his
emancipated slave. " Non-citizenship " was the fourth
fact guaranteed by the seller of a slave to the pur-
chaser, the other three being: (i) that the slave
should not rebel or run away ; if he returned to his
former master he was to be sent back ; (2) that no
claim should lie against the validity of the sale on
account of technical or other errors ; and (3) that the
purchaser should be secured against any claim made
upon the services of a slave by a royal officer.

Barachiel adds that after the death of the two
ladies Gaga and Nubta, he was sold for money to
Itti-Marduk-baladh, of the Egibi family, thus becom-
ing a servus redimendus argento, a slave who could be
ransomed with money, and that he awaits the sentence
of the court.

The judges decided that Barachiel should be
restored to his .original status, and added that it was
in the uzuz (or ustiz) of the two married persons
Samas-mudammiq and Qudasu that the judgment
was pronounced. This may signify "absence," the
two having died during the interval of more than

BAB YL ONI AN LA WSUITS AND JUDGMENTS 1 59

twenty years which had elapsed since the marriage.
It is probable that Barachiel had invented the story of
his taking part in the wedding because he thought
that its falsity could not be detected. If, however, the
word is equivalent to the expression ina du-zti, the
texts from Sippara would go to show that it must
mean " in the presence of."

It may be remarked that not a word is said about
" a deed of slavery," which was certainly not given to
a slave in order to prove his own servile condition as
a mndex libertatis, as Dr. Revillout seems to imagine.

The only penalty imposed upon the slave is his
restoration to his ancient condition ; penalties were
decreed against those who wished to annul a contract,
not against those who pretended to be free citizens.
In this respect the Babylonian law was more humane
than the Roman. This is the more surprising, since
it cannot be denied that severe penalties were at times
inflicted. The Micheaux- stones, for example, in-
scribed in the twelfth century before our era, threaten
the transgressors of a contract and those who annul
their covenants with the curses of the gods, each of
whom would inflict a special punishment. The old
Jew escaped with the failure of his attempt to recover
his undeserved loss of liberty ; perhaps the court took
into serious consideration his fidelity to his former
master, who had esteemed him to be worth not only a
house but other slaves as well.

TRANSLATION OF A BABYLONIAN LAWSUIT
RELATING TO A JEW

i. Barachiel is a slave of ransom 1 belonging to Gaga the

daughter of
2 whom in the 35th year of Nebuchadnezzar,

king of BABYLON, 2

3. [from Akhi-]nuri, the son of Nabu-nadin-akh, for the

third of a inina and 8 shekels

4. she had bought. Recently 3 he has instituted an

action, saying thus : I am the son of a (noble)
ancestor, of the family 4 of Bel-rimanni,

5. who have joined the hands (in matrimony) of Samas-

mudammiq the son of Nabu-nadin-akh

6. and the woman Qusadu the daughter of Akhi-nuri,

even I. In the presence of

7. the high-priest, 5 the nobles and the judges of Nabo-

nidus king of BABYLON

8. they pleaded the case and listened to their arguments

in regard to the obligation of servitude

9. of Barachiel. From the 35th year of Nebuchadnezzar

king of BABYLON

10. to the yth year of Nabonidus king of BABYLON, S he

had been sold for money, had been put

11. in pledge, (and) as the dowry of Nubta the daughter

12. of Gaga had been given. Afterwards Nubta had alien-

ated him by a sealed contract ; 7

1 For the meaning of this expression see above, p. 158.

2 B.C. 570.

3 Ana eninni, not a proper name as Dr. Revillout supposes !

4 Read lu zir. Several distinguished persons were called Bel-rimanni,
among others a priest of the Sun-god.

8 Sangu. 6 B.C. 549.

7 The text does not seem to me to have been correctly copied here.

BAB YLONIAN LA WSUITS AND JUDGMENTS 161

13. in exchange for a house and slaves to Zamama-nadin

14. her son and Idina her husband had given him. They

read (the evidence) and

15. said thus to Barachiel: Thou hast brought an action

and said : The son of a (noble) ancestor

1 6. am I. Prove to us thy (noble) ancestry. Barachiel

his former statement

1 7. retracted, saying : Twice have I run away from the

house of my master, but many people (were pre-
sent),

1 8. and 1 I was seen. I was afraid and said (accordingly)

that I am the son of a (noble) ancestor.

1 9. My citizenship exists not ; I am the slave of ransom of

Gaga.

2 o. Nubta her daughter received me as (her) dowry ;
Nubta

21. alienated me by a sealed contract, and to Zamama-

nadin her son and Idina 2 her husband

22. gave me in exchange; and after the death of Gaga

(and) Nubta,

23. to Itti-Marduk-baladh the son of Nabu-akhe-iddin of

the family of Egibi, for silver

24. I [was sold]. I am a slave. Go now, [pronounce

sentence] about me.

25. [The high-priest], the nobles and the judges heard the

evidence

26. [and] restored [Barachiel] to his condition as slave of

ransom, notwithstanding the absence of Samas-
mudammiq

27. [the son of Nabu-nadin-akh] and Qudasu the daughter

of Akhi-nuri, the seller 3

28. [of the slave]. For the registration of this [decision]

Musezib the [priest]

1 Not ka.

2 Such names are all, I think, emphatic imperatives : Idina, "give !"
Basa, " exist ! " Iriba, " multiply ! " Considering the Aramaic transcrip-
tion of the last name, we ought perhaps to pronounce Idinai, Basai.

3 Nadinan, a singular noun with the same termination as makhiranu,
' ' the buyer ; " masikhanu, ' ' the measurer ; " paqiranu, " the plaintiff ; "
napalkattanu, " the defendant. "

VOL. I M

1 62 RECORDS OF THE PAST

29. [and] Nergal-akhe-iddin the judges

30 of the family of Epis-el, in the city of the palace

of the king of BABYLON, the iyth day of
31. the month Marchesvan 1 [the 7th? year] of Nabonidus

king of BABYLON.

1 October.

INSCRIPTION OF MENUAS, KING OF
ARARAT, IN THE VANNIC LANGUAGE

TRANSLATED BY THE EDITOR

SINCE the publication of my Memoir on " The Cunei-
form Inscriptions of Van Deciphered and Translated "
in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xiv. 4,
1882, we have begun to learn something about a
race of kings who ruled on the shores of Lake Van
in Armenia, from the ninth to the seventh centuries
before our era. The founder of the dynasty, Sar-
duris I, the son of Lutipris, who reigned in B.C. 833,
introduced the cuneiform system of writing as well
as other elements of Assyrian culture into the country
over which he was king. The inscriptions he has
left us are in the Assyrian language ; but his suc-
cessors discontinued the use of a foreign tongue, and
the language of their texts is invariably their native
one. It is semi-flectional in character, and possibly
belongs to the same family of speech as that of
which Georgian is the modern representative. For
want of a better name it is known as Vannic. The
story of its decipherment will be found in the Memoir
above cited.

164 RECORDS OF THE PAST

The grandson of Sarduris I was Menuas, a prince
who carried his arms far and wide, and has bequeathed
to us numerous records of his wars and buildings.
Far away from his capital of Dhuspas or Tosp, near
the mountain of Rowandiz and the Lake of Urumiyeh,
on the summit of the pass of Keli-shin, 1 2,000 feet
above the level of the sea, is a monument of his cam-
paigns, which is wrapt during the greater part of the
year in a coating of ice ; in the north he engraved
his inscriptions beside the banks of the Araxes, while
the record of his campaign against "the land of the
Hittites " is inscribed on the cliff of the Euphrates
at Palu, about midway between Malatiyeh and Van.

The inscription translated here was copied by
Schulz and Sir A. H. Layard from a stone built into
the wall of a vault under the church of Sts. Peter and
Paul at Van, and a squeeze of it has been taken
by Captain Clayton. The transliterated text and
analysis will be found in my Memoir, xxxii. p. 555.
The text is mutilated in parts, and at the time my
Memoir was published I was unable to restore some
of the passages in it. The progress that has since
been made, however, in the study of the Vannic in-
scriptions, enables me now to supply their deficiencies,
and also to correct and supplement the translation I
then gave. For the sake of Vannic scholars I append
here a transliterated text of the inscription as it
should read after the restoration of the missing
characters :

INSCRIPTION OF MENU AS, KING OF ARARAT 165

1. [god Khal-di-]ni-ni us-ma-si-ni man Me-nu-a-s man Is-

pu-u-i-ni-[khi-ni-s]

2. [a-li-e] i-u tu-su-kha-a-ni land Ma-a-na-a-i-di us-ta-a-di

3. [land e-ba-]a-ni-a tu-u-bi a-ma-as-tu-u-bi i-ku-u-ka-a-ni

4. [sali si-su-kha-ni-]e person Khu-ra-di-ni-li plural kid-da-

nu-u-li kha-a-i-tu-u

5. [man Sa-da-ha-li-]e-khi-ni-ni land-m-m city Su-ri-si-li-ni

city Tar-khi-ga-ma-a-ni

6. [city . . . ]-dhu-ra-a-ni man Sa-da-ha-li-e-khi-ni-da-a-ni

ap-ti-ni

7. [city . . . ]-li-e-i stone gar-bi-e land Kha-ti-na-as-ta-a-ni

ap-ti-ni
8 i u-e land Al-zi-i-ni-ni IIMCXIII person

ta-ar-su-a-ni

9. [sa-li-]e a-li-ke za-as-gu-u-bi a-li-ke alive a-gu-u-bi
10. [god Khal-di-]e a-li-ma-a-nu a-ru-u-bi person Khu-ra-di-

na-u-e plural

We learn from the inscription that the land of the
Khate or Hittites extended as far north as Alzi, the
situation of which is given in the inscription of
Tiglath-Pileser I (i. 64 ; see above,, p. 94, note 4),
and that Sada-hadas, whose name was perhaps .pro-
nounced Sanda-hadas, was the king of that portion
of the Hittite nation with which Menuas was brought
into contact. The mention of the name of the Khate
or Hittites on this and other Vannic monuments
shows that the name was not confined to the Hittites
of the south.

INSCRIPTION OF THE VANNIC KING MENUAS

1. (To the KHALDis-gods), 1 the gracious, Menuas the son

of Ispuinis 2

2. (speaks) thus : In the spring (?), when I had approached

the land of MINNI 3

3. I carried away the people of (that distant country), I

partitioned (them). The same

4. (year), after collecting the (baggage) of the army, the

fruits (?) 4

5. of the country of the son of Sada-halis, the cities of

SURISILIS, TARKHI-GAMAS, 5

1 The supreme god of Van was Khaldis, but as each tribe or district
also worshipped a god of the same name, there were many Khaldis-gods
who are invoked by the Vannic kings along with the supreme Khaldis of
Van. It was from the worship of Khaldis that the population of a part of
Armenia became known to the Greeks as Khaldsei, a name naturally con-
founded with that of the Chaldeans of Babylonia.

2 The Vannic kings usually call themselves kings of Biainas or Bianas,
a name which has passed through the Byana of Ptolemy into the modern
Van. Van is now, however, the name of the city which the Vannic kings
called Dhuspas or Tosp, instead of denoting a district as it did in their
time, Tosp being now the name of the district. Biainas was known to the
Assyrians under the name of Urardhu, the Ararat of the Old Testament.
Mount Ararat, it may be noted, is a modern designation, the name of
Ararat not being applied to the country north of the Araxes in the Biblical
age, and " the mountains of Ararat " of Genesis viii. 4 signifying, as in the
Assyrian inscriptions, the Kurdish mountains to the south of Lake Van.

3 The Mana of the Vannic texts are the Manna of the Assyrians, the
Minni of the Old Testament, whose position is shown by the inscriptions to
have been immediately to the west of the kingdom of Van, from which they
were separated by the Kotur range.

4 Khai-tA maybe connected with khai-di-a-ni, "fruits" (from khai,
' ' to grow "), but it may also be a compound of tu and kha, ' ' to possess, "
like 'sui-du, " to set for a possession," or abili-du, " to set on fire."

6 Tarkhi-gamas seems to be compounded with the name of the Hittite
god Tarkhu, like Tarkhu-lara, king of the Gamguma, and Tarkhu-nazi,
king of Malatiyeh, mentioned on the Assyrian monuments.

INSCRIPTION OF MENUAS, KING OF ARARAT 167

6. (and) . . . DHURAS, which is called the seat of the son

of Sada-halis,

7. the stones of (the city of) ... lis, which is called the

seat of the HITTITES,

8. (I captured), and 2113 soldiers of (the year), 1 belonging

to the country of ALZIS,

9. partly I killed, partly I took alive.

10. (To KHALDIS) I brought all and each of those who be-
longed to the army.

1 This expression is of frequent occurrence in the Vannic texts, and its
literal translation is certified by ideographs ; but what it means is doubtful.

THE ANCIENT HEBREW INSCRIPTION
OF SILOAM

TRANSLATED BY THE EDITOR

THE oldest Hebrew inscription yet discovered is en-
graved on the rocky wall of the subterranean channel
which conveys the water of the Virgin's Spring at
Jerusalem into the Pool of Siloam. The history of
its discovery is curious. In the summer of 1880 one
of the native pupils of Dr. Schick, a German architect
long resident in Jerusalem, was playing with some
other lads in the Pool, and while wading up the sub-
terranean channel slipped and fell into the water.
On rising to the surface, he noticed, in spite of the
darkness, what looked like letters on the rock which
formed the southern wall of the channel. Dr. Schick,
on being told of them, visited the spot, and found
that an ancient inscription, concealed for the most
part by the water, actually existed there.

The first thing to be done was to lower the level of
the water, so as to expose the inscription to view.
But his efforts to copy the text were not successful.
He was not a palaeographer ; and as the letters of the
inscription, as well as every crack and flaw in the stone,

1 69

had been filled by the water with a deposit of lime, it
was impossible for him to distinguish between char-
acters and accidental markings on the rock, or to
make out the exact forms of the letters. The first
intelligible copy was accordingly made by myself
during my visit to Jerusalem in February 1881. As,
however, I had to sit for hours in the mud and water,
working by the dim light of a candle, my copy required
correction in several points, and it was not until the
arrival of Dr. Guthe six weeks later that an exact
facsimile was obtained. Dr. Guthe removed the de-
posit of lime by the application of an acid, and so
revealed the original appearance of the tablet. A cast
of it was taken, and squeezes made from the cast
which could be studied at leisure and in a good light.
The inscription is engraved on the lower part of an
artificial tablet cut in the wall of rock about 19 feet
from the place where the subterranean conduit opens
out upon the Pool of Siloam, and on the right hand
side of one who enters it. The conduit is at first
about 1 6 feet high ; but the height gradually lessens
until in one place it is not quite 2 feet above the
floor of the passage. According to Captain Conder's
measurements, the tunnel is 1708 yards in length from
the point where it leaves the Spring of the Virgin to
the point where it enters the Pool of Siloam. It does
not run, however, in a straight line, and towards the
centre there are two culs de sac, the origin of which is
explained by the inscription. We there learn that
the workmen began the conduit simultaneously at

1 70 RECORDS OF THE PAST

both ends, like the engineers of the Mont Cenis tunnel,
intending to meet in the middle. But they did not
succeed in doing so, though the two excavations had
approached one another sufficiently near for the work-
men in the one to hear the sound of the pickaxes used
by the workmen in the other. How such a feat of
engineering was possible in the age when the tunnel
was excavated it is difficult to understand, more
especially when we remember that the channel slopes
downward through the rock, and winds very consider-
ably. It may be added that the floor of the conduit
has been rounded to allow the water to pass through
it more easily.

The Pool of Siloam is of comparatively modern
construction, but it encloses the remains of a much
older reservoir. It is situated on the south-eastern
extremity of the hill, sometimes, but erroneously,
called Ophel, which lies to the south of the Temple-
hill, now represented by the Mosque of Omar, but
separated from the latter by the remains of a valley,
which was first perceived by Dr. Guthe and Dr.
Schick. The Virgin's Spring is on the opposite side
of the hill, but more to the north, overlooking the
valley of the Kidron. As it is the only natural
spring, or " gihon," as the Jews would have called it,
in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the command of
its supply of water was of primary importance to the
inhabitants of the Jewish capital. It was, however,
outside the walls of the city, and hence the necessity
of cutting a conduit through the hill which should

convey its water to a reservoir within the town. We
are told in 2 Chron. xxxii. 4 that when the
Assyrians invaded Judah Hezekiah " stopped all the
fountains," that is to say, he concealed them under
masonry or earth. The Virgin's Spring or Gihon
must have been similarly sealed up, while its water
was conducted into the city through a subterranean
channel.

The date of the inscription has occasioned a good
deal of controversy, some scholars assigning it to the
reign of Hezekiah, and others to an earlier period.
The chief reason for believing it to have been a
work of Hezekiah is that in 2 Kings xx. 20 it is
stated that " he made a pool and a conduit, and
brought water into the city," while in 2 Chron.
xxxii. 30 we read that he "stopped the upper
watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down
to the west side of the city of David." But a more
literal rendering of the latter passage would be, " he
stopped the exit (inotsa] of the waters of the Upper
Gihon, and he directed them downwards on the west
side of the city of David." Here it is evident that
by the Upper Gihon is meant the Spring of the
Virgin, for which the word mdtsd or " exit" is em-
ployed in the inscription. Besides the Upper Gihon
there must have been another or Lower Gihon, which
can have been none other than the Pool of Siloam.
This had become a second source of water-supply,
and might therefore with propriety be named "a
spring."

172 RECORDS OF THE PAST

It would consequently appear from the chronicler's
words that the Pool of Siloam already existed in the
time of Hezekiah, and that what the Jewish monarch
did was to excavate a second conduit, running from
the Pool, not in a winding direction like the tunnel
of Siloam, but in a straight direction along the
western side of the city of David. Now such a
conduit has actually been discovered cut in the rock
and leading from the Pool of Siloam to another
reservoir which once existed below.

There is, moreover, evidence in the Book of Isaiah
that the tunnel of Siloam was in existence before
Hezekiah came to the throne. In Isaiah viii. 6 a
prophecy is recorded, uttered while Ahaz was still
reigning, in which allusion is made to "the waters
of Shiloah that go softly." This can hardly refer
to anything else than the gently -flowing stream
which still runs through the tunnel of Siloam. The
inference is supported by the name Shiloah itself,
which probably signifies " the tunnel," and would
have been given to the locality in consequence of
the channel which was here excavated through the
rock.

The characters of the inscription exhibit to us
the alphabet which was used by the prophets before
the Exile. They belong to what may be termed
the southern or Jewish branch of the old Phoenician
alphabet, a parallel branch to which was used in
Moab, and is found on the Moabite Stone. The
forms of some of the letters are more archaic than

ANCIENT HEBRE W INSCRIPTION OF SI LOAM 1 73

those on the Moabite Stone, the forms of others less
so. Similar forms are met with on early Israelitish
and Jewish seals, which go back to a period preced-
ing the Captivity. They are characterised by a
peculiarity which shows not only that writing was
common, but also that the usual writing material
was papyrus or parchment, and not stone or metal.
The " tails" attached to certain letters are not straight
as on the Moabite Stone or in Phoenician inscriptions,
but rounded. The words, it may be added, do not
always end with the line.

The language of the inscription is the purest
Hebrew. It presents us with only one unknown word,
zadali in line 3, which seems to mean "excess" or "ob-
stacle." Why it should have been engraved on the
lower part of a carefully-prepared tablet, where the
water of the conduit would necessarily conceal it, it
is impossible to conjecture. The upper part of the
tablet may perhaps have been intended to contain a
royal inscription giving the name of the king under
whom the work was executed.

One fact, however, is made very clear by the
text. Whether it were the Siloam tunnel itself, or
the second tunnel leading from it to a lower reservoir,
that was constructed by Hezekiah, in either case the
Pool of Siloam would lie " on the west side of the
city of David." " The city of David" must, accord-
ingly, have stood on the southern hill, the so-called
Ophel ; and since the city of David was identical
with Zion, according to 2 Samuel v. 7, this hill must

174 RECORDS OF THE PAST

represent the original mount of Zion. Consequently
the valley of the Sons of Hinnom must be the valley
which was known in the time of Josephus as the
Tyropceon or Cheesemakers'. It once divided both
the Temple hill and the southern hill from the
mountains on the west, though it is now choked
with the rubbish which the numerous destroyers of
Jerusalem have thrown into it. In some places the
rubbish is more than 70 feet deep, and under it, if
anywhere, we must look for the tombs of the kings
that were cut in the rocky cliff of the city of David.
Here, too, if anywhere, will be found the relics of the
temple and palace that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed,
overlaid with the accumulations of more than two
thousand years.

A cast of the Siloam inscription may be seen in
the rooms of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and
facsimiles in Canon Isaac Taylor's History of the
Alphabet, i. p. 234, and in Fresh Light from the
Monuments, p. 101.

1. (Behold the) excavation ! Now this is the history of

the excavation. While the excavators were still
lifting up

2. the pick, 1 each towards his neighbour, and while there

were yet three cubits to (excavate, there was heard)
the voice of one man

3. calling to his neighbour, for there was an excess (?) in

the rock on the right hand (and on the left ?). And
after that on the day

1 Garzen, translated "ax" in i Kings vi. 7, where it is used of the
instrument with which the stones of Solomon's temple were quarried.

A NCIENT HEBRE W INSCRIPTION OF SIL 0AM 1 7 5

4. of excavating the excavators had struck pick against

pick, one against another,

5. the waters flowed from the spring 1 to the pool 2 for

a distance of 1200 cubits. And (part) 3

6. of a cubit was the height of the rock over the head of

the excavators.

1 Motsa, literally "exit," which is used of the Upper Gihon or Virgin's
Spring in 2 Chron. xxxii. 30.

2 Berechah, rendered "pool" in 2 Sam. ii. 13, Isaiah xxii. 9, n, etc.
We learn from the latter passage (Isaiah xxii. 9, n) that there were at
least three "pools" or reservoirs in Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah,
and yet our inscription shows that there must have been a period when
only one such reservoir existed, since it terms the Pool of Siloam ' ' the
pool."

3 A flaw in the rock makes this word doubtful. It begins with m and
ends with /, and appears to consist of three letters.

END OF VOL. I

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" The book is a monument of laborious and patient investigation, and its utility
is increased by drawings which greatly assist a comprehension of the text." Daily
Telegraph.

" We must not omit to give an appreciative word to the great number of illustra-
tions from photographs and from the author's own drawings. They add much to the
value of a highly interesting and indeed important book." Literary Churchman.

Oriental Records : Monumental and Historical. Confirmatory of the
Old Testament Scriptures. A Collection of the most important
recent discoveries, especially in Western Asia and Egypt, derived
from the highest attainable antiquity ; confirmatory and illustrative
of the statements of Holy Scripture. Illustrated. By WILLIAM
HARRIS RULE, D.D. Crown 8vo. Cloth extra, each 55.

"The volume is learned and interesting." Literary Churchman.
" Students of the Scriptures will find the book very useful." Literary World.
" The style is lucid and simple." Israelis Watchman.

"The volume forms a valuable contribution to our stock of Biblical literature."
Rock.

* \* The two volumes " Monumental" and "Historical" are distinct.
Genesis : with a Talmudical Commentary. By P. I. HERSHON.
With an Introductory Essay by Canon SPENCE, M. A. Demy 8vo.
Cloth, 560 pp., los.

" The texts of Genesis scattered throughout the twelve volumes of the Talmud
have been carefully searched out and arranged in the order in which we find them in
our Hibles. To each individual text is added the immediate context as found in the
Talmud. After many of the texts and the direct Talmudical comments upon them,
so-called Synoptical Notes are introduced. These refer to the principal subjects sug-
gested in the text just commented upon, and any curious and interesting remark on
these subjects contained in the Mishna and Gemara is appended. Careful references
to the particular treatise, page, and column are in all cases given." Introductory
Essay.

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